33arbara   ^etnetodt    Lectures  on 
^floral*  of  Cratoe 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?  By  STAN- 
TON  COIT. 

SOCIAL  JUSTICE  WITHOUT  SOCIALISM. 
By  JOHN  BATES  CLARK. 

THE  CONFLICT  BETWEEN  PRIVATE  MO- 
NOPOLY AND  GOOD  CITIZENSHIP.  By 
JOHN  GRAHAM  BROOKS. 

COMMERCIALISM  AND  JOURNALISM.  By 
HAMILTON  HOLT. 

THE  BUSINESS  CAREER  IN  ITS  PUBLIC 
RELATIONS.  By  ALBERT  SHAW. 


IS  CIVILIZATION 
A  DISEASE? 


BY 

STANTON  COIT 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Cbc  ititoersibc  press  <£ambnOrje 
1917 


COPYRIGHT,    19171    BY  THE   REGENTS  OF  THK 
UNIVERSITY  OF   CALIFORNIA 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Published  May  IQIJ 


101 

cfc 


58493 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
flAJJTA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 


BARBARA  WEINSTOCK 

LECTURES  ON  THE  MORALS 

OF  TRADE 

This  series  will  contain  essays  by 
representative  scholars  and  men  of 
affairs  dealing  with  the  various  phases 
of  the  moral  law  in  its  bearing  on 
business  life  under  the  new  economic 
order,  first  delivered  at  the  University 
of  California  on  the  Weinstock  founda- 
tion. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A 
DISEASE? 

I.    TRADE  TYPICAL  OF  CIVILIZATION 

IN  choosing  "The  Morals  of  Trade" 
as  the  general  title  of  the  Weinstock 
Lectureship,  I  am  informed  that  its 
founder  meant  the  word  "Trade"  to  be 
understood  in  its  comprehensive  sense, 
as  commensurate  with  our  whole  sys- 
tem of  socialized  wealth  —  at  least,  upon 
the  present  occasion  I  shall  interpret  it 
in  this  broad  way. 

I  shall  furthermore  ask  you  to  con- 
sider our  system  of  socialized  wealth  — 


2     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

its  practice  and  principles  —  in  relation 
to  the  whole  of  that  vast  artificial  struc- 
ture of  human  life  which  is  labelled 
"  Civilization,"  and  which  began  to 
prevail  some  ten  thousand  years  ago. 
Such  a  comprehensive  sweep  of  vision 
is,  in  my  judgment,  necessary  if  we  are 
to  view  trade  in  true  human  perspec- 
tive; nor  can  we  estimate  the  degree  of 
praise  or  blame  we  ought  to  confer  upon 
it  until  we  have  determined  the  worth 
of  civilization  itself.  For  trade  is  not 
only  bound  up  inextricably  with  the 
whole  of  our  social  order,  but,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  manifests  in  a  most  acute 
form  the  universal  character  of  civiliza- 
tion in  general.  We  must  therefore 
discover  the  structural  principle  which 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    3 

began  to  co-ordinate  the  lives  of  any 
group  of  human  beings  when  their  tribe 
finally  passed  out  of  barbarism.  Having 
discovered  this,  we  shall  be  able  to 
judge  whether  by  its  ever-advancing 
application  to  the  life  of  men,  and  its 
ever-increasing  domination  over  their 
wills,  it  has  furthered  the  cause  of  ideal 
humanity  or  not.  If  we  find  that  it  has 
been  essentially  humane,  we  shall  have 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  its  off- 
spring, trade,  is  moral.  If,  however,  we 
unearth  in  the  very  principle  of  historic 
civilization  something  radically  wrong, 
anti-human  and  inhuman,  and  if  we  can 
discover  another  co-ordinating  princi- 
ple which  is  humane  and  feasible,  civil- 
ization will  then  be  seen  to  be  a  thing 


4    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

to  be  "superseded"  —  as  Nietzsche 
thought  man  himself  was  —  and  trade, 
its  latest  and  lustiest  issue,  will  be  felt 
to  be  a  usurper  deserving  to  be  disinher- 
ited in  favor  of  some  true  economic 
child  of  the  "Holy  Spirit  of  Man." 

II.    IS  CIVILIZATION  JUST? 

In  order  to  open  such  lines  of  an- 
thropological investigation  and  ethical 
reflection,  I  have  raised  the  question : 
"  Is  Civilization  a  Disease  ? " 

Had  I  asked,  "  Is  Civilization  Chris- 
tian : "  I  should  have  defeated  my  own 
end.  You  would  have  answered  "  No  " 
as  soon  as  you  saw  the  subject  of  my 
discourse  announced,  and  would  have 
stayed  at  home.  But  you  might  still 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     5 

have  given  your  ethical  sanction  to 
trade.  You  might  have  said,  "  It  does 
not  pretend  to  be  Christian ;  but  that  is 
nothing  against  it,  for  the  vital  principle 
of  Christianity  is  sentimental  and  im- 
practicable :  and  what  won't  work  can't 
be  right." 

Had  I  raised  the  question  in  the 
form,  "  Could  trade  ever  have  emanated 
from  an  intelligent  motive  of  universal 
love  — of  deference  for  the  humanity  in 
every  man?"  you  would  have  replied, 
"  Never ! "  But  you  might  have  con- 
soled yourself  with  the  thought  that  it 
is  only  a  small  part  of  our  boasted  civil- 
ization. We  have  art  and  education  and 
family  life  and  monogamy  and  religion ; 
and  these  come  in  as  correctives,  so  that 


6     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

trade,  although  not  conceived  of  benev- 
olence and  not  bearing  the  stamp  of 
humanity  in  its  character,  is  compara- 
tively harmless  under  the  restraints  laid 
upon  it.  Then,  too,  the  idea  of  univer- 
sal love  savors  of  theology,  and  would 
have  put  my  lecture  under  that  general 
ban  which  in  philosophical  circles  has 
been  set  up  against  theological  ethics. 

Indeed,  I  even  shrank  from  asking, 
"Is  civilization  unethical,  or  wrong,  or 
bad?"  For  nowadays  we  find  moral 
judgments  more  attractive  when  they 
are  disguised  or  at  least  slightly  veiled. 
When  we  are  really  curious  to  know 
what  is  good,  we  become  shy  ;  we  are 
not  sure  that  our  neighbors  may  not  put 
a  cynical  interpretation  upon  any  appear- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     7 

ance  of  enthusiasm  in  our  effort  to  find 
out  what  is  right.  Anticipating  such 
delicacy  in  my  prospective  audience  of 
to-night,  I  threw  a  physiological  dra- 
pery, not  to  say  pathological,  over  the 
ethical  bareness  of  my  theme,  by  intro- 
ducing into  it  the  idea  of  disease.  For 
while  it  may  no  longer  be  a  stigma  to 
be  un-Christian,  and  while  some  have 
been  trying  to  break  all  the  traditional 
tables  of  moral  values  and  prevent  any 
new  ones  from  being  inscribed,  nobody, 
so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,  has 
denied  that  disease,  whether  physical  or 
only  mental,  is  an  evil  and  a  thing  which 
it  would  be  wicked  to  spread  for  the 
mere  delight  in  spreading  it.  Happily, 
there  is  still  astir  throughout  the  com- 


8     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

munity  an  active,  virile,  and  unashamed 
desire  —  and  not  only  among  women  — 
for  health.  And  in  alertness  and  re- 
sourcefulness it  is  second  only  to  the 
desire  for  wealth  itself.  The  result  is, 
that  if  anything  which  we  have  admired 
and  been  proud  of  has  been  discovered 
by  experts  to  be  of  the  nature  of  disease, 
we  want  to  be  notified,  so  that  we  may 
reverse  our  sentiments  towards  it,  and  if 
possible  destroy  it.  The  word  "  disease  " 
is  still  plainly  one  of  reproach. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  very  term 
"civilization"  sets  emotions  vibrating 
of  deference  and  awe  towards  the  insti- 
tution it  signifies.  Indeed,  pride  in  be- 
ing civilized  is  still  so  nearly  universal 
—  especially  among  Americans  —  that 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     9 

many  persons  upon  hearing  the  point 
mooted  whether  civilization  be  a  dis- 
ease or  not,  are  disposed  to  resent  the 
bare  suggestion  as  smacking  of  whimsi- 
cality. 

III.    A  METAPHORICAL  USE  OF  THE 
WORD   "DISEASE  " 

I,  therefore,  hasten  to  hide  myself 
thus  early  in  my  discourse  behind  the 
man,  bigger  than  I,  who  many  years 
ago  first  aroused  this  question  in  my 
mind,  a  question  which,  having  once 
fastened  itself  upon  the  soul,  may  allow 
one  no  rest  and  may  prevent  one  from 
ever  again  going  on  gayly  through  life 
singing  with  Browning's  Pippa:  — 

God's  in  His  Heaven  — 
All 's  right  with  the  world. 


io     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

It  is  now  twenty-six  years  since  I  first 
read  Mr.  Edward  Carpenter's  penetrat- 
ing essay,  then  but  recently  published, 
entitled  Civilization :  Its  Cause  and  Cure. 
The  very  name  of  the  book  made  one 
ask  :  "  Is  civilization  then  a  disease  ? " 
And  if  one  deigned,  as  I  did,  to  read 
the  essay  carefully,  one  found  the  au- 
thor defending  the  affirmative  in  all  se- 
riousness and  with  much  thoroughness, 
and  displaying  acute  analytical  power 
throughout  his  argument.  The  charge 
of  whimsicality  could  not  hold  against 
him.  The  author  showed  an  adequate 
insight  into  the  social  structure  which 
is  called  civilization.  What  was  equally 
essential,  his  knowledge  of  the  latest 
speculations  as  to  the  nature  of  disease, 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     n 

—  theories  which  have  not  yet  been  su- 
perseded and  which  when  applied  by 
Sir  Almroth  Wright  proved  to  be  most 
fruitful  working  hypotheses,  —  Carpen- 
ter's knowledge  of  these  was  compre- 
hensive and  discriminating.  He  accord- 
ingly never  pressed  the  analogy  between 
civilization  and  disease  unduly — he  knew 
that  it  could  not  be  made  to  fit  all  par- 
ticulars. And  he  never  fell  into  any  con- 
fusion of  thought ;  he  easily  avoided  be- 
ing caught  in  his  own  metaphor.  He 
employed  it  only  within  limits  and  only 
when  it  rendered  the  moral  issue  more 
concrete  and  vivid.  Because  he  had  a 
scientific  knowledge  both  of  civilization 
and  of  disease,  he  could  safely  use  lan- 
guage which  appealed  to  the  moral 


12     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE* 

emotions  as  an  aid  to  our  moral  judg- 
ment. 

Indeed,  Mr.  Carpenter  showed  him- 
self not  only  scientific  in  his  ethics,  but 
what  is  much  rarer  in  these  days,  eth- 
ical in  his  science.  For  it  is  question- 
able whether  one  can  ever  arrive  at  any 
moral  judgment  except  there  be  a  deep 
and  strong  emotional  accompaniment  to 
one's  rational  investigation.  If  we  do 
not  take  sides  with  humanity  at  the  out- 
set, if  we  eliminate  all  preference  for 
certain  kinds  of  conduct  and  goals  of 
pursuit  which  grew  up  in  the  human 
mind  before  we  began  our  scientific 
criticism  of  morals,  how  shall  we  ever 
get  back  again  into  the  sphere  of  dis- 
tinctively ethical  judgment?  For  in- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     13 

stance,  how  could  we  strike  out  from 
the  field  of  observation  the  something 
which  we  count  the  moral  factor  in 
life,  and  then  proceed  to  investigate  the 
morals  of  trade  ?  Evidently  we  must  in 
every  ethical  enquiry  start  by  taking 
sides  with  that  trend  of  the  Race -Will  in 
us,  which  moves  plainly  towards  an  ever- 
increasing  self-knowledge,  self-reverence 
and  self-control  on  the  part  of  man.  For 
it  is  this  race-will  in  us  whereby  we  have 
the  capacity  and  interest  to  call  any  line 
of  conduct  or  any  disposition  of  the  mind 
good  or  bad,  right  or  wrong. 

IV.    OUTLINE   OF   MY   ARGUMENT 

Nor  do  I  simply  mean  that  we  must 
show  loyalty  to  life  as  opposed  to  death, 


14    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

or  to  health  as  against  disease.  It  is  more 
than  that.  The  lifeward  effort  of  some 
beings  clashes  with  the  corresponding 
attempt  to  live  on  the  part  of  others, 
and  the  actualization  of  one  impersonal 
ideal  of  beauty,  truth,  or  society  exacts 
the  sacrifice  of  one  set  of  human  lives 
and  favors  the  survival  of  another,  so 
that  an  opposition  in  ideals  may  mean 
an  antagonism  in  the  struggle  of  classes 
and  masses  of  men  for  existence.  There 
is  a  combat,  and  we  are  called  upon  to 
choose  which  side  to  encourage  and  sup- 
port. One  and  the  same  state  of  things 
often  spells  disease  and  death  to  the  one 
party  and  life  and  health  to  the  other. 
I  shall  be  able  on  this  account  to  show 
that  whether  civilization  appears  to  us 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     15 

as  a  disease  or  not  depends  upon  what 
sort  of  a  person  we  are,  and  to  which 
side  we  are  constitutionally  disposed  to 
attach  ourselves.  To  show  this,  I  will 
first  draw  an  analogy  on  the  biological 
plane  and  then  I  will  cite  the  judgment 
of  great  humanists  who  have  sided  against 
civilization.  After  that,  I  will  submit  in- 
stances in  civilization  itself  for  your  own 
judgment.  Only  then  shall  I  return  to 
Edward  Carpenter,  to  give  a  resume  of 
his  position,  and  to  point  out  how  far 
and  why  I  agree  with  him,  and  at  what 
stage  I  part  company  with  him  and  for 
what  reasons.  Then  I  shall  attempt  to 
present  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  steps  in 
human  advancement  towards  civiliza- 
tion as  the  best  anthropologists  have 


1 6     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE* 

traced  them.  Thus,  we  shall  be  able  to 
see  our  historic  social  order  in  right  re- 
lation to  that  ideal  humanity  which  our 
own  spiritual  constitution  projects  pro- 
phetically above  the  threshold  of  our 
consciousness.  Then,  if  ever,  we  shall  be 
in  a  state  of  mind  to  judge  whether  the 
thing  which  civilization  has  begotten 
after  its  own  kind  and  named  "trade" 
is  good  or  bad. 

V.    MAN  FERSUS  CIVILIZATION 

Now  to  my  biological  analogy:  It 
was  recently  my  privilege  to  be  con- 
ducted over  the  Rockefeller  Institute  for 
Medical  Research  in  New  York  City. 
You  will  remember  that  to  it  some  mil- 
lions of  dollars  have  been  assigned,  for 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     17 

the  purpose  of  discovering  the  cause  and 
cure  of  bacterial  diseases.  In  one  depart- 
ment of  the  Institute  a  Japanese  profes- 
sor showed  under  the  rays  of  the  ultra- 
microscope  specimens  of  a  remarkable 
bacillus,  the  existence  of  which  he  had 
been  the  first  to  detect.  It  was  that  kind 
of  bacillus  which,  if  it  is  present  in  the 
marrow  of  a  man's  spinal  cord,  induces 
a  state  of  the  body  that  is  called  loco- 
motor-ataxy.  This  state  is  one  in  which 
the  man  who  manifests  it  is  unable  to 
control  properly  the  movements  of  his 
feet  and  legs.  He  has  lost  command 
from  the  supreme  cerebral  centre;  the 
lower  nerve  ganglia  seem  to  have  be- 
come insubordinate  and  to  act  on  their 
own  initiative.  But  is  locomotor-ataxy 


1 8     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

a  disease  ?  Clearly  your  answer  will  de- 
pend upon  whether  you  are  on  the  side 
of  the  man  or  the  microbe.  If  you  sym- 
pathize with  the  man  and  are  thinking 
of  him,  it  is  a  disease ;  but  if  your  heart 
is  with  the  microbe  there  in  the  spinal 
cord,  the  locomotor-ataxy  will  be  to  you 
life  and  health  abundant,  and  that  not 
only  for  the  individual  specimen  whom 
you  pick  out  for  observation,  but  for  his 
whole  family  which,  as  the  ataxy  ad- 
vances, reproduces  itself  proportionately, 
and  with  an  inconceivable  rapidity. 

What  is  to  determine  whether  you  are 
on  the  side  of  the  man  or  the  microbe  ? 
Surely  the  constitutional  bent  of  your 
emotional  and  volitional  preference.  It 
is  not  a  matter  for  the  science  of  fact  to 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     19 

consider.  Mere  intellect,  mere  reason, 
knows  nothing  of  health  and  disease, 
unless  it  assumes  this  distinction  as  its 
starting-point.  It  knows  only  the  order 
of  sequences.  Suppose,  then,  we  were 
to  find  that  civilization  had  pitted  itself 
against  Man,  so  that  it  was  a  case  of 
Man  versus  Civilization,  as  Herbert 
Spencer  conceived  an  antagonism  be- 
tween Man  and  the  State.  Should  we 
not  be  compelled,  in  order  to  decide 
what  condition  of  things  was  one  of 
health,  to  open  up  conscious  relations 
with  our  deepest  trend  of  heart  and  will, 
and  find  out  whether  we  flowed  with 
humanity  or  with  civilization  ?  Nor 
would  there  be  any  escape  from  the 
necessity  of  remaining  true  to  our  own 


20     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

trend  and  favoring  whatever  flowed  the 
same  way.  In  case  of  a  clash  between  the 
social  order  and  humanity,  the  health  of 
each  is  to  the  other  as  a  disease  and, 
therefore,  the  question  inevitably  arises, 
"  Which  is  in  our  judgment  to  be  pre- 
served?" and  each  one's  answer  must  de- 
pend on  whether  he  finds  himself  after 
full  deliberation  irresistibly  drawn  to  the 
one  side  or  the  other.  Civilization  may 
be  to  man  as  the  microbe  to  the  loco- 
motor-ataxy  subject;  but  innate  civili- 
zationists  would  delight  in  the  surrender 
of  humanity  to  the  social  order.  To 
them  what  would  humanity  be  but  civ- 
ilization's opportunity,  its  habitat,  its 
food-supply  ?  I  am  saying  that,  to  prove 
trade  immoral  it  is  not  enough  to  show 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     21 

that  man  is  a  sacrifice  to  the  economic 
order ;  you  would  be  required  also  to 
demonstrate  that  man  ought  not  to  be 
sacrificed  to  any  social  order,  that  he 
must  always  be  the  final  end,  and  never 
a  mere  means.  But  that  is  exactly  what 
you  can  never  demonstrate  to  any  one 
who  is  not  innately,  spiritually,  natu- 
rally, on  the  side  of  man  against  all 
other  objects  of  interest.  I  mean  that 
there  is  no  arguing  with  any  one  who 
constitutionally  hesitates  to  side  with 
man.  You  might  pray  for  such  a  one  ; 
but  it  would  be  folly  to  reason  with  him, 
for  the  foundation  is  not  in  him  upon 
which  your  reasonings  could  mount.  All 
this  seems  to  me  necessary  to  say,  be- 
cause I  get  the  impression  from  books 


22     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

on  political  economy  that  most  writers 
and  readers  first  dehumanize  themselves 
as  a  prerequisite  to  a  discussion  of  the 
morals  of  trade. 

VI.    THE  LIVING  FOUNDATIONS 

In  one  of  his  allegorical  poems,  James 
Russell  Lowell  depicted  the  antagonism 
of  sentiment  to  which  I  am  referring  as 
existing  between  Christ  and  his  conven- 
tional worshippers.  The  poem  is  a  slight 
thing :  although  strict  in  metre  and  per- 
fect in  rhyme,  it  is  too  flowing  and  fan- 
tastic to  be  classed  high  in  literature. 
But  if  we  view  it  as  a  scientific  essay  in 
dynamic  sociology,  it  is  admirable  be- 
yond criticism.  As  its  meaning  is  quite 
separable  from  its  form  and  sensuous 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     23 

contents,  I  therefore  ask  you  not  to 
think  of  it  as  poetry  or  Christian  my- 
thology, but  to  regard  it  only  as  a  com- 
pact treatise  in  ethical  economics.  Be- 
cause this  poem  is  familiar  to  you  all, 
it  will  serve  my  object  the  better.  It 
represents  Christ  as  coming  back  to  earth 
after  eighteen  hundred  years,  and  all  the 
grandees  as  rendering  Him  elaborate 
homage.  Nor  do  they  omit  to  direct 
His  attention  to  His  own  image  set  up 
in  the  places  of  highest  honor.  But  still, 
according  to  our  dynamic  sociologist :  — 

.  .  .  wherever  his  steps  they  led, 
The  Lord  in  sorrow  bent  down  His  head, 
And  from  under  the  heavy  foundation  stones 
The  Son  of  Mary  heard  bitter  groans. 

And  in  church  and  palace  and  judgment-hall, 
He  marked  great  fissures  that  rent  the  wall, 


24    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

And  opened  wider  and  still  more  wide 

As  the  living  foundations  heaved  and  sighed. 

"  Have  ye  founded  your  thrones  and  altars,  then, 
On  the  bodies  and  souls  of  living  men  ? 
And  think  ye  that  building  shall  endure 
Which  shelters  the  noble  and  crushes  the  poor?" 

Then  Christ  sought  out  an  artisan  — 
A  low-browed,  stunted,  haggard  man, 
And  a  motherless  girl,  whose  fingers  thin 
Pushed  from  her  faintly  Want  and  Sin. 

These  set  He  in  the  midst  of  them, 
And  as  they  drew  back  their  garment-hem 
For  fear  of  defilement,  "  Lo,  here,"  said  He, 
"  The  images  ye  have  made  of  Me  ! ' 

To-day  DO  one  denies  that  the  foun- 
dations are  alive  and  that  they  heave 
and  sigh.  In  our  age  one  need  not  be 
of  the  order  of  Christ  to  have  ears  to 
hear  the  bitter  groans.  Everybody  hears 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     25 

them,  if  one  may  judge  from  the  uni- 
versal reports  of  the  daily  papers.  In- 
deed, how  to  suppress  the  groans  or  to 
prevent  them  from  becoming  more  ar- 
ticulate and  coherent  is  the  most  vexing 
problem  of  the  government  of  the  most 
civilized  state  in  the  world.  At  least 
Prince  von  Biilow  so  represents  the  case 
in  his  book  entitled  Imperial  Germany. 
And  the  party  leaders  of  the  United 
States  have  all  been  alert  for  two  decades 
to  discover  how  to  render  impossible  an 
upheaval  of  the  living  foundations  of 
America.  There  is,  as  I  say,  no  denying 
the  fact  that  the  foundations  are  alive, 
and  that  they  not  only  groan  bitterly, 
but  —  what  is  more  serious  —  heave 
threateningly.  Whether  any  one  per- 


26     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

son,  however,  is  on  the  side  of  the  liv- 
ing foundations,  as  according  to  Lowell 
Jesus  Christ  was,  or  on  the  side  of  the 
thrones  and  altars,  as  his  conventional 
worshippers  are  depicted  to  be  by  Lowell 
and  many  another  American  writer  since, 
depends  upon  what  the  special  person's 
innate  taste  is.  The  thrones  and  altars 
have  become  more  and  more  magnifi- 
cent in  beauty,  costliness,  and  splendor, 
with  the  progress  of  civilization ;  but 
not  so  the  mob,  the  rabble,  the  "  under- 
world," whose  stirrings  have  rent  the 
walls.  Christ's  taste,  it  would  seem,  was 
not  primarily  aesthetic.  But  then  not 
every  one  is  a  son  of  Mary,  and  not 
every  carpenter's  son  sides  with  the  class 
to  which  his  father  belonged. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     27 

VII.    CIVILIZATION   CONDEMNED  BY 
CHRIST  AND  ALL  SONS  OF  MAN 

I  said  that  after  my  biological  analogy 
I  should  cite  the  judgments  of  some  great 
sages  who  saw  in  civilization  an  enemy 
of  man.  Of  these  I  have  just  been  men- 
tioning the  greatest.  The  Founder  of 
Christianity  set  His  Will  dead  against 
the  established  order  of  society,  rebuk- 
ing the  upholders  of  thrones  and  altars, 
and  becoming  the  champion  of  the  out- 
casts. The  kingdom,  He  announced,  was 
not  to  be  of  this  our  world  of  money- 
lenders. No  wonder  the  rulers  of  His 
day  gave  Him  short  quarter,  so  that  after 
three  years  of  agitation  this  speaker  of 
rousing  parables  to  the  multitude,  who 


28     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

had  no  bank  account,  was  silenced  for- 
ever. Likewise,  it  was  a  foregone  con- 
clusion that  every  disciple  of  Christ 
whose  spirit  was  to  be  set  aflame  by 
His  —  like  St.  Francis,  and  Savonarola, 
Wycliffe,  Luther  (at  the  first),  and  John 
Wesley  —  should  turn  in  pity  to  the  liv- 
ing foundations  and  in  horror  of  spirit 
from  the  entombing  thrones. 

But  the  protest  against  the  sacrifice 
of  man  to  mammonized  society  has  been 
no  monopoly  of  Christ  and  those  spirit- 
ually descended  from  Him.  The  ancient 
Hebrew  prophets  taught  equally  a  king- 
dom that  was  to  be  diametrically  the 
opposite  in  principle  from  that  which 
prevailed  in  the  Jewish  State  or  in  Baby- 
lon, and  later  in  Macedon  or  Rome.  It 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     29 

should  be  noted  that  the  prophets  and 
Christ  accompanied  their  censure  of  the 
formative  principle,  upon  which  nations 
and  traders  had  built  up  their  dealings 
with  one  another,  with  a  proposed  sub- 
stitute. But  if  we  go  back  to  Gautama 
and  the  India  of  his  time,  we  find  that 
the  Buddha's  protest  against  civilization 
was  still  more  extreme ;  for  he  did  not 
wait  to  submit  a  new  principle  before 
condemning  the  old.  Indeed,  he  felt 
that  self-conscious  existence  for  the  in- 
dividual, as  he  beheld  it  everywhere,  was 
a  tragic  calamity,  and  altogether  unen- 
durable. Preferable  would  be  the  ex- 
tinction utterly  of  all  individualized  self- 
hood. He  would  isolate  the  individual 
and  submit  him  to  a  discipline,  the  ob- 


30    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

ject  of  which  was  escape  forever  from 
the  wheel  of  existence.  He  advocated 
not  mere  individualistic  anarchy,  but  the 
annihilation  of  individuality  as  prefer- 
able to  civilized  life.  A  third  of  the 
human  race  still  believe  in  his  discipline, 
and  in  the  alternative  he  proposed  to  the 
highly  developed  type  of  social  order 
which  prevailed  in  his  time  in  India. 

Nor  do  Gautama,  the  prophets,  and 
Christ  stand  alone.  All  the  great  hu- 
manists of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries,  although  professing  no  disci- 
pleship  of  earlier  teachers,  were  at  one 
with  them  in  condemning  the  root- 
principle  of  the  existing  co-ordination 
of  human  lives  in  politics,  economics, 
and  education.  The  cry  of  Rousseau, 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    31 

"  Back  to  Nature ! "  and  all  the  watch- 
words of  Voltaire  and  the  encyclope- 
dists, were  so  many  summonses  to  revolt 
against  the  entire  order  of  organized  so- 
ciety. The  same  meaning  underlay  all 
the  writings  of  Fourier  and  Prud- 
homme,  of  Owen  and  the  other  Eng- 
lish communists.  It  was  as  if  they  all 
said,  "  Civilization  is  a  disease ;  let  us 
rid  ourselves  of  it."  With  the  socialists, 
Marx  and  Lassalle,  and  the  anarchists, 
like  Stepniak  and  Kropotkin,  the  con- 
demnation of  society,  as  it  is  and  always 
had  been,  was  equally  radical  and  sweep- 
ing. Even  humanists  less  violent  in  their 
protest,  not  so  negative  in  their  criticism, 
nor  so  positive  in  their  offered  substi- 
tutes, like  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  like 


32     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

Shelley  and  Whitman  and  Swinburne, 
like  Henry  George  and  Henry  Demo- 
rest  Lloyd,  all  aim  to  create  in  us  the 
judgment  that  civilization,  as  it  has  been 
from  the  first,  is  no  friend  to  the  best 
in  any  man.  No  lover  of  humanity  seems 
ever  to  have  worshipped  the  god  who 
rules  over  the  things  that  are  established. 
They  all  agree  with  the  mediaeval  theo- 
logians that  this  world  has  been  given 
over  to  the  Prince  of  Darkness. 

VIII.    TWO    INSTANCES    OF   CIVILIZATION 

We  may  come  to  wonder  the  less  at 
this  adverse  judgment  when  we  have 
considered  two  instances  of  the  effects 
which  the  highest  types  of  civilization 
have  had  upon  the  masses  of  mankind 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    33 

who  were  brought  under  its  sway.  Take 
ancient  Egypt  and  ancient  Athens.  Go 
back  to  the  building  of  the  pyramids. 
Although  they  are  among  the  earliest 
monuments  of  civilization,  they  are  yet 
among  the  most  marvellous  illustra- 
tions of  the  mastery  of  the  human  mind 
over  matter.  Scarcely  three  had  passed 
of  the  ten  thousand  years  which  have 
constituted  the  epoch  that  superseded 
barbarism,  before  these  vast  tombs,  or 
whatever  they  are,  began  to  be  erected. 
Lost  in  admiration  as  he  stands  before 
the  Great  Pyramid,  how  can  any  one 
but  resent  the  suggestion  that  the  social 
order,  which  made  it  at  last  possible, 
was  a  disease,  preying  upon  the  body 
and  spirit  of  men  ? 


34    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

And  yet,  if  one  turns  from  it  to  ex- 
amine that  organization  of  human  labor 
and  that  control  of  the  wills  of  the 
masses  of  Egypt  which  made  it  possible, 
and  then  again  looks  up  at  it,  one  marks 
great  fissures  that  rend  the  whole  mass 
and  one  hears  the  foundations  groan. 
To  speak  thus  is  only  an  imaginative 
way  of  saying,  what  all  the  anthropolo- 
gists and  archaeologists  tell  us,  that  to 
the  building  of  any  one  of  the  great  pyr- 
amids went  the  enforced  labor  of  up- 
wards of  a  million  men  for  many  years, 
who  were  literally  driven  by  the  lash  of 
the  whip.  There  is  no  ground  for  sup- 
posing that  the  feel  of  the  whip,  when 
the  back  of  an  Egyptian  slave  began  to 
bleed,  was  different  from  what  we  should 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    35 

suffer  if  the  stroke  fell  now  on  us :  nor 
that  cries  of  pain  were  any  the  less  nat- 
ural then.  And  we  must  remember  that, 
according  to  the  unanimous  opinion  of 
anthropologists,  the  organization  of  en- 
forced labor  is  one  of  the  essentials  of 
civilization.  Picturesque  and  vivid,  but 
not  exaggerated,  is  the  saying  of  the 
author  of  that  able  book,  The  Nemesis 
of  Nations:  "  Civilization  begins  with 
the  crack  of  the  whip."  Lord  Cromer 
quotes  this  dictum  in  his  work  on  Egypt 
as  giving  an  epitome  of  the  kind  of 
power  behind  the  civilizing  process  as 
it  has  always  manifested  itself  in  the 
land  of  the  Nile  ;  and  then,  lest  those  of 
his  readers  who  live  in  the  glass  house 
of  English  history  should  commit  the 


36    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

ridiculous  sin  of  unconscious  hypocrisy, 
he  gently  but  firmly  reminds  us  that 
many  inhumanities  of  a  similar  spirit, 
especially  towards  offenders  against  the 
laws  of  property,  were  not  suppressed  in 
England  till  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

In  these  comments  of  mine  upon 
Egypt,  I  may  seem  to  have  appealed  to 
your  sentiment  of  humanity ;  but  I  have 
never  for  a  moment  forgotten  that  no 
instance  from  history  can  prove  civiliza- 
tion a  disease  except  to  those  who  are 
intuitively  on  the  side  of  the  man  in- 
stead of  the  microbe,  of  the  people  in- 
stead of  the  pyramid.  Such  instances, 
however,  are  of  value  in  bringing  those 
who  listen  to  them  to  a  clear  self-con- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    37 

sciousness  of  their  own  primal  prefer- 
ence —  and  that  is  a  distinct  gain,  even 
when  the  preference  is  for  the  pyramid. 
It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  masses 
of  Egypt  were  a  sacrifice  —  and  not  will- 
ingly—  to  civilization.  In  the  preceding 
periods  of  savagery  and  barbarism,  there 
had  been  no  such  enslavement;  the  or- 
ganization of  enforced  labor  had  not 
proceeded  so  far.  The  crack  of  the  whip 
was  still  as  yet  intermittent.  Accord- 
ing to  Lewis  Morgan,  civilization  is  the 
progress  of  man  from  beast  to  citizen. 
Well,  until  ten  thousand  years  ago,  man 
was  more  beast  than  citizen ;  but,  hap- 
pily for  him,  among  the  beasts  of  the 
field  there  is  nothing  parallel  to  this  or- 
ganization of  labor  through  the  will  of 


38     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

one  by  means  of  the  stroke  of  the  cour- 
bash  upon  the  backs  of  the  many. 

Some  students  who  shrink  in  horror 
from  the  Egyptian  type  of  civilization 
plead  nevertheless  for  the  type  which 
was  manifested  in  ancient  Greece.  Let 
us  go,  then,  to  Athens  in  the  age  of  Per- 
icles, that  period  of  her  glory  concern- 
ing which  Professor  Freeman  some- 
where says  that  to  have  lived  but  ten 
years  in  the  midst  of  it  would  have  been 
worth  a  hundred  of  modern  mediocrity. 
Who  can  think  otherwise  as  he  recalls 
the  Athenian  drama,  eloquence  and  phi- 
losophy, architecture  and  sculpture  ?  But 
when  one  turns  to  the  organization  of 
society,  as  it  was  in  Athens,  to  find  out 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    39 

at  what  human  price  the  splendor  was 
bought  of  that  dazzling  decade  when 
the  Parthenon  was  being  built,  one  finds 
that  of  the  inhabitants  of  that  City  of 
the  Light  scarcely  more  than  thirty  thou- 
sand were  free  men,  while  two  hundred 
thousand  were  slaves.  Again,  the  living 
foundations  groan  !  And  if  our  heart,  by 
its  nature,  insists  on  going  out  to  the 
sacrificed,  our  delight  in  Athenian  Kul- 
turvr\\\  be  henceforth  shot  through  with 
anguish.  Our  only  way  of  escape  will 
be  by  absorbing  Nietzsche  into  our  sys- 
tem until  the  poison  paralyzes  our  im- 
pulse to  pity.  But  you  may  think  that  if 
we  shift  our  investigation,  we  shall  find 
relief.  Let  us  enquire,  then,  into  the 
position  of  woman  instead  of  the  man- 


40     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

slave  in  Athens.  Alas  !  we  are  now  con- 
fronted with  facts  which  reveal,  on  the 
part  of  one  whole  half  of  Greek  man- 
kind, the  surrender  of  their  distinctive 
humanity  to  civilization,  to  that  process 
whereby  sentient  beings  are  transformed 
from  beasts  into  citizens.  Professor  Wes- 
termarck  sums  up  the  attitude  of  civil- 
ization to  women  in  these  terms  :  — 

Nowhere  else  has  the  difference  in  culture 
between  men  and  women  been  so  immense 
as  in  the  fully-developed  Greek  civilization. 
The  lot  of  a  wife  in  Greece  was  retirement 
and  ignorance.  She  lived  in  almost  absolute 
seclusion,  in  a  separate  part  of  the  house,  to- 
gether with  her  female  slaves,  deprived  of  all 
the  educating  influence  of  male  society,  and 
having  no  place  at  those  public  spectacles 
which  were  the  chief  means  of  culture. 

He  then  calls  attention  to  the  startling 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    41 

absence  from  the  whole  of  Greek  liter- 
ature of  any  evidence  that  any  man  who 
had  received  the  training  which  Greek 
culture  gave  ever  fell  in  love  with  any 
woman.  In  his  chapter  on  the  "  Sub- 
jection of  Wives,"  Professor  Wester- 
marck  further  says  :  — 

The  status  of  wives  is  in  various  respects 
connected  with  the  ideas  held  about  the  fe- 
male sex  in  general.  Woman  is  commonly 
looked  upon  as  a  slight,  dainty,  and  relatively 
weak  creature,  destitute  of  all  nobler  qualities. 
Especially  among  nations  more  advanced  in 
culture  she  is  regarded  as  intellectually  and 
morally  inferior  to  man.  In  Greece,  in  the 
historic  age,  the  latter  recognized  in  her  no 
other  end  than  to  minister  to  his  pleasure  and 
to  become  the  mother  of  his  children. 

This  author  finds  the  Greek  subjec- 
tion of  wives,  as  you  will  have  noted,  no 


42     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

exception  to  the  universal  rule  as  to  the 
relation  of  culture  to  womanhood.  After 
speaking  of  the  status  of  woman  among 
the  ancient  Hebrews,  and  the  position 
assigned  her  by  that  greatest  instrument 
of  European  civilization  called  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church,  he  repeats  his 
generalization  in  these  terms:  — 

Progress  in  civilization  has  exercised  an  un- 
favorable influence  on  the  position  of  woman 
by  widening  the  gulf  between  the  sexes,  as  the 
higher  culture  was  almost  exclusively  the  pre- 
rogative of  the  men.  Moreover,  religion,  and 
especially  the  great  religions  of  the  world,  has 
contributed  to  the  degradation  of  the  female 
sex  by  regarding  woman  as  unclean. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    43 

IX.   THE  AGE  OF  THE   FOUNDATIONS 
AT  HAND 

Is  this  degradation  an  inevitable  out- 
come of  the  animating  principle  at  the 
heart  of  the  process  whereby  sentient  be- 
ings have  thus  far  been  transformed  from 
beasts  into  citizens?  We  are  forced  to 
answer  "Yes."  Otherwise,  why  has  the 
relative  degradation  of  woman  deepened 
universally  with  the  progress  of  civil- 
ization ?  If  Westermarck  is  right,  it 
would  seem  that  the  lowest  foundations 
of  highly  developed  society  have  always 
consisted  of  the  bodies  and  souls  of  wo- 
men. If  such  be  the  historic  fact,  it  may 
seem  strange  that  only  in  our  day,  but 
now  the  world  over,  is  heard  the  wail  of 


44     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

women  crying  to  be  freed.  Perhaps  the 
reason,  however,  that  we  for  the  first  time 
hear  the  wail  is  because  never  before  had 
the  fissures  grown  wide  enough  to  allow 
the  fainter,  but  more  piteous,  sighs  to 
escape. 

The  fact,  too,  of  which  there  is  no 
doubt,  that  at  last  in  our  age  even  wo- 
men are  beginning  to  be  revered  as  re- 
sponsible moral  and  spiritual  agents  may 
be  a  sign  that  the  Day  of  the  Founda- 
tions is  come,  that  the  age  of  civilization 
is  nearing  its  close,  and  that  a  new  era, 
animated  by  a  fresh  principle  of  human 
co-ordination,  is  at  hand.  There  is  at 
least  evidence  that  many  women  are  ask- 
ing: "Are  the  products  of  civilization 
worth  the  price  which  we  women  have 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    45 

been  compelled  to  pay,  in  order  that 
they  may  exist?  Is  our  subjection  justi- 
fiable?" In  reply,  the  men  who  enter- 
tain an  innate  contempt  for  woman  an- 
swer, "Yes";  those  who  are  moved  by 
the  extreme  opposite  of  sentiment  have 
arrived  at  the  bitter,  though  chivalrous, 
thought,  "  Better  the  non-existence  of 
the  human  race  than  the  continued  sac- 
rifice of  its  womankind";  while  even 
the  sons  of  the  golden  mean  in  judgment 
go  so  far  as  to  say  that  not  only  the  al- 
ready acquired  benefits  of  civilization, 
but  finer  ones  and  more  abundant,  can 
from  now  on  be  attained  by  some  other 
process,  which  will  involve  no  degrada- 
tion either  to  workingman  or  to  woman, 
and  which  in  structural  principle  and 


46     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

human  effects  will  differ  as  much  from 
civilization  as  civilization  itself  differed 
from  the  barbarism  and  savagery  which 
preceded  it. 

My  own  judgment  is,  that  civilization 
is  nearing  its  close.  Four  or  five  deadly 
blows  were  dealt  out  to  it  by  four  or  five 
events  which  happened  in  the  middle  of 
the  fifteenth  century  after  Christ,  and  it 
has  been  staggering  ever  since.  In  that 
century,  certain  things  occurred  which 
produced  the  very  opposite  effect  upon 
the  masses  of  mankind  to  that  produced 
by  the  wonderful  thing  which  had  hap- 
pened ten  thousand  years  ago  and  by  its 
occurrence  had  changed  radically  the  re- 
lation of  men  and  women  to  the  com- 
munity and  to  the  physical  universe  in 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    47 

which  they  lived.  What  was  begun  in 
the  fifteenth  century  by  the  events  that 
took  place  then,  and  what  was  continued 
as  a  destructive  process  until  recently, 
is,  in  my  judgment,  being  finished  now 
through  a  constructive  process  which  has 
been  set  up  by  certain  other  things  — 
some  ten  or  twenty  —  which  have  hap- 
pened since  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century. 

X.    A    NEW    STRUCTURAL    PRINCIPLE 

It  has  seemed  to  me  necessary  at  this 
point  in  my  argument  to  call  attention 
to  the  introduction  into  social  life  in  the 
fifteenth  century  of  a  new  working  prin- 
ciple which  has  been  in  direct  antago- 
nism to  the  basic  idea  of  civilization,  be- 


48     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

cause  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  dur- 
ing the  last  four  centuries  the  history  of 
Europe  and  the  New  World  furnish- 
es illustrations  of  two  conflicting  proc- 
esses of  social  integration.  Not  every- 
thing that  has  happened  since  the  New 
World  was  discovered  can  be  set  down 
to  the  credit  of  that  process  which  is  still 
ascendant  in  Prussia.  Instances,  there- 
fore, from  modern  history  which  go 
against  my  account  of  civilization  have 
no  weight  against  my  contention  and 
cannot  be  raised  against  me;  modern 
instances  must  not  only  be  shown  to  be 
facts,  but  to  be  vital  outputs  of  the  same 
principle  that  animates  the  old  order. 
To  account  every  co-ordination  of  mod- 
ern social  life  as  an  instance  of  civiliza- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    49 

tion  is  as  if  any  one  should  cite  the  turbine 
engine  and  its  achievements  and  set  these 
down  to  the  credit  of  the  piston  engine. 
But  the  idea  of  the  one  is  wholly  new 
and  not  a  further  evolution  of  the  old. 
Or  it  is  as  if  one  should  assign  the  glory 
of  the  motor-car  to  the  inventor  of  the 
bicycle,  or  of  the  bicycle  to  the  origina- 
tor of  the  horse-cart ;  or  as  if  one  should 
point  to  an  aeroplane  as  an  illustration 
of  a  further  stage  in  the  evolution  of  the 
motor-car.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  aeroplane 
came  after,  but  not  a  fact  that  it  came 
from,  the  motor-car.  If,  as  I  believe,  the 
new  order  which  began  to  manifest  it- 
self in  the  fifteenth  century  stands  to  civ- 
ilization as  the  aeroplane  to  the  motor- 
car, and  as  the  motor-car  to  the  bicycle 


50     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

and  the  horse-cart,  or  as  the  turbine  to 
the  piston  engine,  then  I  am  right  in 
claiming  that  we  ought  not  to  call  it 
civilization.  If  we  do,  we  should  be  act- 
ing like  any  one  who  insisted  upon  call- 
ing an  airship  a  horse-cart.  There  might 
be  reasons  for  so  doing:  and  there  may 
be  reasons  for  calling  things  civilization 
which  are  something  quite  different. 
For  instance,  I  can  conceive  that  the 
new  order  might  be  more  easily  insinu- 
ated into  general  acceptance  if  those 
whose  interests  are  all  vested  in  the  old 
are  not  informed  that  it  is  new.  But  to- 
night I  am  treating  not  of  words,  but  of 
things ;  and  if  it  will  hasten  the  triumph 
of  the  new  order  to  pretend  that  it  is 
civilization,  let  us  by  all  means  do  so  — 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     51 

just  as  we  call  six  o'clock  seven  in  order 
to  gain  an  extra  hour  of  sunlight  during 
the  waking  day. 

I  know  that  to  many  the  idea  will 
appear  grotesquely  naive,  that  an  insti- 
tution as  old  as  civilization  and  so  wide- 
spreading  should  come  to  an  end  and  be 
superseded  by  something  else,  and  that 
this  change  should  be  taking  place  under 
our  very  eyes.  But,  happily  for  me,  the 
world-conflict  which  is  now  devastating 
Europe  has  begun  to  undermine  in  the 
soul  of  many  the  fetish-worship  of  civil- 
ization. And  to  assist  further  in  break- 
ing the  spell  which  civilization  may  have 
cast  over  the  imagination  of  most  of  my 
audience,  I  would  remind  you  that  civil- 
ization is,  after  all,  a  mere  mushroom 


52     IS  CIVILIZATION  .A  DISEASE? 

growth,  and  that  what  has  sprung  up  only 
overnight  cannot  have  taken  deep  root 
(as  if  it  were  a  thing  practically  eternal), 
and  could  not  be  very  difficult  to  replace 
by  something  more  deliberately  thought 
out  —  by  something  learned  through  ten 
thousand  years  of  the  tragic  effects  ex- 
perienced by  thousands  of  millions  of 
human  beings.  Civilization,  I  say,  is  a 
mere  mushroom  growth,  as  compared 
with  the  whole  life-period  of  man's  ex- 
istence on  earth.  It  is  only  ten  thousand 
years  old ;  while,  by  the  most  modest  and 
cautious  calculation,  man  has  existed  one 
hundred  thousand  years ;  and  during  the 
ninety  thousand  which  preceded  the  last 
ten,  he  made  gigantic  progress  towards 
self-knowledge  and  self-reverence.  Let 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     53 

us,  therefore,  not  be  browbeaten  by  civ- 
ilization on  account  of  its  antiquity. 

xi.  EDWARD  CARPENTER'S  INDICTMENT 

OF  CIVILIZATION 

Equally  must  we  guard  against  the 
fallacy  of  attributing  only  the  beneficent 
effects  of  civilization  to  its  inherent  prin- 
ciple, while  we  trace  all  the  evils  which 
have  arisen  in  its  train  to  extrinsic  causes 
—  to  human  nature,  or  to  superficial 
and  local  obstructions.  This  word  of 
warning  brings  me  back  to  Mr.  Ed- 
ward Carpenter's  essay  on  Civilization: 
Its  Cause  and  Cure;  for  when  I  first  read 
it  he  appeared  to  me  to  exaggerate  out 
of  all  proportion  the  evils  in  modern 
life  as  compared  with  the  good  in  it: 


54    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

especially  did  I  feel  that  he  erred  in  that 
he  accounted  the  evils  as  permanent  and 
organic  characteristics  of  the  civilizing 
process  itself,  and  believed  that  they 
must  increase  with  its  development  and 
could  not  be  eradicated  except  with  its 
extinction.  During  the  last  twenty-six 
years,  however,  I  have  learned  a  thing 
or  two.  I  have  not  lost  one  jot  or  tittle 
of  my  early  faith  in  man,  and  I  have 
even  gained  fresh  hope  for  a  speedy  issue 
of  the  human  race  out  of  most  of  its 
sufferings  and  sins ;  but  I  have  gained 
this  fresh  hope  only  because  I  have  been 
drawn  by  wider  and  closer  observation 
of  economic  events  —  and  especially  of 
the  new  developments  of  trade  and  poli- 
tics the  world  over  —  to  the  conclusion 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     55 

that  the  evils,  however  great,  are  to  be 
traced  to  the  false  principle  that  ani- 
mates the  civilizing  process,  and  that  they 
will  fall  away  of  themselves  when  once 
that  principle  has  been  exchanged  for 
another  that  is  already  well  known,  and 
which,  as  I  have  remarked,  began  four 
centuries  ago  to  disintegrate  the  estab- 
lished order. 

Carpenter's  indictment  of  civilization 
seems  to  me  incontrovertible.  The  best 
way  for  me  to  present  it  briefly  will  be 
by  means  of  a  number  of  typical  quota- 
tions, in  which  he  indicates  the  nature 
of  disease  and  shows  that  such  is  the 
state  —  mental,  physical,  social,  and 
moral  —  induced  in  man  by  the  organ- 
ization of  enforced  labor  and  the  whole 


56     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

of  the  adopted  method  of  making  citi- 
zens out  of  wild  beasts  :  — 

When  we  come  to  analyze  the  conception 
of  disease,  physical  or  mental,  in  society  or 
the  individual,  it  evidently  means  .  .  .  loss  of 
unity.  Health,  therefore,  should  mean  unity. 
.  .  .  The  idea  should  be  a  positive  one  —  a 
condition  of  the  body  in  which  it  is  an  en- 
tirety, a  unity,  a  central  force  maintaining 
that  condition ;  and  disease  being  the  break-up 
—  or  break-down —  of  that  entirety  into  mul- 
tiplicity. .  .  .  Thus  in  a  body,  the  establish- 
ment of  an  insubordinate  centre  —  a  boil,  a 
tumor,  the  introduction  and  spread  of  a  germ 
with  innumerable  progeny  throughout  the 
system,  the  enlargement  out  of  all  reason  of 
an  existing  organ  —  means  disease.  In  the 
mind,  disease  begins  when  any  passion  asserts 
itself  as  an  independent  centre  of  thought  and 
action.  .  .  .  What  is  a  taint  in  the  mind  is  also 
a  taint  in  the  body.  The  stomach  has  started 
the  original  idea  of  becoming  itself  the  centre 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     57 

of  the  human  system.  The  sexual  organs  may 
start  a  similar  idea.  Here  are  distinct  threats, 
menaces  made  against  the  central  authority 

—  against  the  Man  himself.  For  the   man 
must  rule,  or  disappear  ;  it  is  impossible  to 
imagine  a  man  presided  over  by  a  Stomach 

—  a  walking  Stomach,  using  hands,  feet,  and 
all  the  other  members  merely  to  carry  it  from 
place  to  place,  and  serve  its  assimilative  ma- 
nia. So  of  the  Brain,  or  any  other  organ  ;  for 
the  Man  is  no  organ,  resides  in  no  organ,  but 
is  the  central  life  ruling  and  radiating  among 
all  organs,  and  assigning  them  their  parts  to 
play.  Disease,  then,  in  mind  or  body,  is  ... 
the  abeyance  of  a  central  power  and  the  growth 
of  insubordinate  centres  —  life  in  each  creature 
being  conceived  of  as  a  continual  exercise  of 
energy  or  conquest,  by  which  external  or  antag- 
onistic forces  (or  organisms)  are  brought  into 
subjection  and  compelled  into  the  service  of 
the  creature,  or  are  thrown  off  as  harmful  to  it. 
Thus,  by  way  of  illustration,  we  find  that 
plants  or  animals,  when  in  good  health,  have 


58     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

a  remarkable  power  of  throwing  off  the  at- 
tacks of  any  parasites  which  incline  to  infest 
them;  while  those  that  are  weakly  are  very 
soon  eaten  up  by  the  same.  A  rose-tree,  for 
instance,  brought  indoors,  will  soon  fall  a 
prey  to  the  aphis,  though  when  hardened  out 
of  doors  the  pest  makes  next  to  no  impres- 
sion on  it.  In  dry  seasons  when  the  young 
turnip  plants  in  the  field  are  weakly  from 
want  of  water,  the  entire  crop  is  sometimes 
destroyed  by  the  turnip-fly,  which  then  mul- 
tiplies enormously ;  but  if  a  shower  or  two 
of  rain  comes  before  much  damage  is  done, 
the  plant  will  then  grow  vigorously,  its  tissues 
become  more  robust  and  resist  the  attacks  of 
the  fly,  which  in  its  turn  dies.  Late  investi- 
gations seem  to  show  that  one  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  white  corpuscles  of  the  blood  is 
to  devour  disease-germs  and  bacteria  present 
in  the  circulation,  —  thus  absorbing  these 
organisms  into  subjection  to  the  central  life 
of  the  body,  —  and  that  for  this  object  they 
congregate  in  numbers  toward  any  part  of 
the  body  which  is  wounded  or  diseased. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     59 

xii.  CARPENTER'S  FALSE  REMEDY 

To  cast  Carpenter's  metaphor,  accord- 
ing to  which  civilization  is  a  thing  to 
be  cured,  into  the  form  of  an  analogy, 
we  might  say  that  the  civilizing  process 
has  been  to  man  what  the  bringing  in- 
doors is  to  a  rose-tree,  or  the  coming  of 
a  drought  to  the  turnips  in  a  field.  And 
I  ask  you  to  assume  with  me  that  this 
is  so ;  as  it  will  help  me  to  get  on  with 
my  argument,  which,  as  it  advances,  will 
reveal  more  and  more  whether  it  be 
inherently  weak  or  strong.  Nor  do  I 
anticipate  much  opposition  to  Carpen- 
ter's mere  indictment  of  civilization. 
At  least  it  is  only  when  he  outlines  his 
remedy  that  my  own  protest  is  aroused. 


60     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

And  I  suspect  that  many  a  reader  will 
feel  with  me,  that  while  to  cure  a  rose- 
tree  or  a  turnip  plant  may  require  only 
the  taking  of  the  one  out  of  doors  again 
and  the  falling  of  the  kindly  showers 
upon  the  other,  the  restoration  of  civil- 
ized man  to  health  would  necessitate 
something  more  than  a  mere  return  on 
his  part  to  Nature  and  savagery.  Indeed, 
such  a  return  may  be  altogether  impos- 
sible, and  even  undesirable.  In  my  judg- 
ment, man  having  (as  Carpenter  himself 
points  out)  become  "self-conscious,"  can 
never  go  back  to  Nature,  since  he  is  no 
longer  the  same  being  he  was  when  he 
emerged  from  his  more  primitive  state. 
Yet  what  Carpenter  recommends  so  far 
as  he  recommends  any  cure,  is  exactly 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     61 

this:  Human  beings  are  to  wear  less 
clothes  —  if  any  at  all ;  man  will  again 
live  out  of  doors,  for  the  most  part,  in- 
stead of  in  houses ;  he  will  return  to  the 
eating  of  uncooked  food  —  mainly  fruit 
and  grains ;  he  will  begin  to  feel  him- 
self one  again  with  Nature  ;  he  is  to  lose 
his  sense  of  sin ;  every  man  will  do  the 
work  he  likes  —  and  presumably  not  do 
the  work  he  does  not  like.  "As  to  Ex- 
ternal Government  and  Law,  they  will 
disappear,"  says  Carpenter,  "  for  they 
are  only  the  travesties  and  transitory 
substitutes  of  Inward  Government  and 
Order.'*  In  religion,  there  is  to  be  a  like 
return  to  Nature.  The  author  says  :  — 

And  when  the  civilization-period  has  passed 
away,   the    old    Nature-religion  —  perhaps 


6a     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

greatly  grown  —  will  come  back.  .  .  .  Our 
Christian  ceremonial  is  saturated  with  sexual 
and  astronomical  symbols;  and  long  before 
Christianity  existed,  the  sexual  and  astronom- 
ical were  the  main  forms  of  religion.  .  .  .  On 
the  high  tops  once  more  gathering  he  will 
celebrate  with  naked  dances  the  glory  of  the 
human  form  and  the  great  processions  of  the 
stars.  .  .  . 

Carpenter  sees  signs  already  here  and 
there  of  the  beginning  of  this  return :  — 

The  present  competitive  society  is  more 
and  more  rapidly  becoming  a  mere  dead  for- 
mula and  husk  within  which  the  outlines  of 
the  new  and  human  society  are  already  dis- 
cernible. Simultaneously,  and  as  if  to  match 
this  growth,  a  move  toward  Nature  and  Sav- 
agery is  for  the  first  time  taking  place  from 
within,  instead  of  being  forced  upon  Society 
from  without.  The  Nature-movement,  begun 
years  ago  in  Literature  and  Art,  is  now  among 
the  more  advanced  sections  of  the  civilized 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     63 

world  rapidly  realizing  itself  in  actual  life, 
going  so  far  even  as  a  denial,  among  some, 
of  machinery  and  the  complex  products  of 
Civilization,  and  developing  among  others 
into  a  gospel  of  salvation  by  sandals  and  sun- 
baths! 

In  order  to  help  us  to  judge  aright 
whether  a  return  to  Nature  and  a  prim- 
itive communism  would  restore  to  man 
that  centrality  and  health  of  which  we 
assume  that  civilization  has  deprived 
him,  we  should  do  well  to  consider  what 
it  was  that  happened  ten  thousand  years 
ago  and  proved  so  sinister  in  changing 
the  relation  of  men  and  women  to  the 
community  in  which  they  lived,  and  to 
the  physical  universe.  But  of  that  event 
we  cannot  gain  an  adequate  apprecia- 
tion unless  we  view  it  in  perspective 


64    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

along  the  line  of  analogous  events,  some 
six,  which  had  occurred  from  time  to 
time  during  the  ninety  thousand  years 
preceding. 

XIII.    SPEECH  AND  FIRE 

A  hundred  thousand  years  ago,  among 
our  ancestors,  who  then  were  only  in- 
articulate mammals,  living  in  trees  and 
caves,  one  of  them  by  himself,  or  a  lit- 
tle group  of  them  together,  hit  upon 
the  use  of  articulate  vocal  signs  as  a 
means  of  conveying  to  his  mates  his 
needs,  his  fears,  his  desires  and  threats. 
It  was  probably  by  a  happy  fluke  that 
he  hit  upon  this  use,  or  by  some  tran- 
scendent flash  of  insight  due  to  a  spon- 
taneous variation  of  ability  above  that 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     65 

of  the  average  ape;  or  else  some  un- 
usual stress  of  hunger  or  danger  of  attack 
drove  even  a  mediocre  individual  to  an 
unwonted  exercise  of  ingenuity.  In  any 
case,  by  inventing  articulate  speech,  he 
brought  into  existence  a  new  species  of 
mammal  —  man.  I  must  leave  to  your 
imagination  the  thousand  transforming 
effects  of  this  new  device  for  communi- 
cating perceptions,  feelings,  and  inten- 
tions. The  speaking  ape  stood  to  his 
own  species,  and  through  them  to  other 
kinds  of  animals  and  to  the  material 
universe,  in  a  different  relation  from 
that  in  which  the  speechless  stood.  The 
power  of  combined  action  among  the 
members  of  any  group  became  immeas- 
urably greater  than  it  had  previously 


66     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

been.  A  social  unity  of  will  was  pos- 
sible that  could  never  have  existed  on 
earth  hitherto.  For  all  we  know,  thirty 
thousand  years  may  have  passed  away 
before  any  other  event  occurred  among 
human  beings  comparable  in  practical 
importance  to  the  invention  of  spoken 
language.  This,  however,  was  all  the 
time  being  gradually  perfected  under 
the  stress  of  new  experiences  in  general 
and  of  trying  predicaments  in  particular. 
Then,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  and 
once  more  by  a  happy  fluke,  or  by  a 
stroke  of  spontaneous  genius,  or  under 
the  pressure  of  some  unprecedented 
danger,  or  through  the  educative  influ- 
ence of  some  new  order  of  experience, 
one  of  the  speaking  apes  hit  upon  the 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     67 

use  of  fire,  and  thereby  introduced  a 
new  era  in  the  advancement  of  man. 
Practically  infinite  was  the  increase  of 
man's  new  mastery  over  Nature.  Into 
temperate  and  even  icy  regions  he  could 
now  penetrate  and,  as  it  were,  create 
around  him  a  little  temporary  zone  of 
tropical  warmth.  With  speech  had  come 
social  unity;  with  fire  at  man's  disposal 
came  mastery  over  matter.  But  the 
unity  thereby  suffered  a  change.  With 
the  invention  of  means  of  creating  arti- 
ficial warmth  the  social  homogeneity 
of  the  tribe  began  to  be  broken.  Who- 
ever controlled  fire  controlled  the  rest 
of  his  group,  since  no  other  way  for  the 
tribal  appropriation  of  the  blessings  of 
regulated  fire  was  possible  among  talk- 


68     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

ing  apes,  except  that  one  individual,  or 
a  very  few,  should  assume  the  office 
of  owner  of  the  sticks  or  flints  for 
igniting  the  fire,  and  should  become 
dispenser  of  the  flame.  The  group  thus 
was  divided  into  the  controller  and  the 
controlled,  the  owner  and  the  owned, 
the  master  and  the  man,  the  governor 
and  the  governed,  the  chief  and  his 
followers. 

XIV.    THE  TWO  MARKS  OF  ALL 
CIVILIZATION 

Such  a  differentiation  of  society  was, 
among  apes,  the  condition  for  any  sort 
of  social  unity ;  but  control  by  the  few 
could  at  the  first  have  been  only  rudi- 
mentary and  intermittent.  Fire  is  not 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    69 

everything,  and  was  indispensable  only 
on  certain  occasions,  as  when  the  group 
were  caught  unexpectedly  in  some  win- 
try region.  Then  the  choice  for  any 
man  might  lie  between  freezing  or 
obeying.  Be  it  observed  that  fire  under 
such  circumstances  would  be  shared  by 
all,  but  the  power  of  social  control 
would  be  monopolized  by  one.  Had 
you  been  there,  but  not  the  mightiest 
of  your  group,  the  condition  of  your 
surviving  the  cold  would  have  been  that 
you  surrendered  whatever  individual  in- 
itiative you  had  had.  You  gained  fire, 
but  lost  freedom.  At  this  point,  by 
some  innate  sense  of  logical  identity, 
my  mind  is  carried  forward  a  hundred 
thousand  years  to  that  centre  of  to-day's 


yo     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

highest  civilization  —  Detroit,  and  to 
its  very  palladium,  the  Ford  Motor 
Works.  For  in  that  far-famed  insti- 
tution is  to  be  found  a  very  striking 
similarity  to  the  primeval  monopoly  of 
initiative  which  arose  with  the  first  con- 
trol of  fire.  Mr.  Henry  Ford  has  been 
magnanimously  ready  to  share  profits 
with  his  men,  but,  so  far  as  I  can  learn, 
no  iota  of  the  industrial  control. 

Before  I  go  to  the  next  step  towards 
citizenship,  I  would  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  thus,  near  to  the  begin- 
ning of  things  human,  when  the  use  of 
fire  was  introduced,  we  are  able  to  de- 
tect the  two  distinguishing  character- 
istics of  all  civilization,  and  of  trade  in 
particular,  which  are  the  sharing  by  the 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     71 

tribe  of  the  blessings  of  man's  mastery 
over  Nature,  but,  as  the  condition  of 
the  sharing,  a  monopoly  of  power  and 
initiative  by  the  few  who  dispense  the 
blessings.  So  much  of  good  and  of 
goods  —  but  no  more  —  could  the  mass 
of  men  enjoy  as  was  compatible  with 
the  continuance  of  the  master's  ascend- 
ancy over  the  men  and  over  the  public. 
We  shall  find  no  other  than  these  marks 
in  all  future  civilization,  to  distinguish 
it  from  savagery  and  barbarism.  The 
only  difference  will  be  that  in  the  period 
of  civilization  proper  —  that  is,  from 
ten  thousand  years  ago  to  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century  after  Christ,  when 
the  established  social  order  began  to 
break  up  —  the  monopoly  of  initiative 


72  IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 
and  control  is  practically  absolute.  As 
we  trace  the  future  steps  in  human  evolu- 
tion, we  shall  see  how  this  concentration 
of  power  in  the  hands  of  rulers  occurred. 
But  it  must  be  further  observed  that 
it  is  not  only  rudimentary  civilization 
which  we  detect  as  ensuing  upon  the 
introduction  of  the  use  of  fire:  it  is 
trade,  socialized  wealth,  the  division  of 
the  community  into  the  "haves"  and 
the  "  have-nots,"  the  introduction  of 
the  working  of  the  law,  that  to  him 
that  hath  shall  be  given  and  that  from 
him  that  hath  nothing  but  his  labor  to 
offer  shall  be  taken  with  it  his  liberty 
also.  It  should  likewise  be  borne  in 
mind  that  with  the  stealing  of  fire  from 
heaven  came  also  that  coalition  of  gov- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     73 

ernment  with  trade,  of  politics  with 
commerce,  of  the  monopolists  of  eco- 
nomic power  with  the  dictators  of  life 
and  death,  of  peace  and  war,  which  is 
manifested  to  the  highest  conceivable 
degree  to-day  in  the  states  most  asser- 
tive of  their  leadership  in  the  vanguard 
of  civilization.  I  said  that  with  the  use 
of  fire  came  the  enslavement  of  men ; 
but  government  and  enslavement  were 
one  and  the  same  thing.  Neither,  how- 
ever, was  as  yet  dominant  over  social  life. 

XV.    ARROWS  AND  EARTHENWARE 

The  talking,  fire-using  anthropoid  in 
the  course  of  time  invented  the  bow  and 
arrow.  So  great  and  so  enduring  were 
the  benefits  of  this  new  device  that  it  is 


74    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

almost  impossible  for  us,  who  have  prof- 
ited by  them,  to  imagine  the  state  of 
human  society  when  men  could  kill  ani- 
mals or  destroy  enemies  only  by  throw- 
ing stones  or  clubs,  or  by  striking  with 
the  fist.  But  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the 
chief  of  a  tribe  of  men  received  an  in- 
calculable increase  of  power  when,  be- 
sides the  instruments  of  ignition,  bows 
and  arrows  were  in  his  possession  to  deal 
out  at  his  will.  Whatever  equality  of  in- 
itiative and  diffused  sovereignty  had  ex- 
isted before  the  use  of  fire  was  known, 
it  now  began  to  vanish,  and  the  men  of 
any  tribe  saw  power  concentrated  in  the 
will  and  word  of  the  chief  and  those 
nearest  him,  while  submission  to  his  com- 
mand was  the  condition  of  survival.  And 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     75 

no  doubt,  with  the  loss  of  that  individual 
liberty  and  that  self-reliance  which  char- 
acterize the  lower  animals,  there  also 
died  away  a  certain  joyousness  and  zest 
of  spontaneous  self-fulfilment,  such  as  we 
observe  in  wild  creatures  so  long  as  they 
are  free  from  hunger  and  thirst  and  se- 
cure from  the  pursuit  of  enemies. 

It  was  perhaps  another  ten  thousand 
years  before  one  more  new  link  in  the 
chain  of  man's  mastery  over  Nature  and 
the  chiefs  mastery  over  his  men  was 
forged.  This  time  it  was  probably  a 
woman  who  —  again  by  a  happy  chance 
or  by  necessity  of  maternal  solicitude — > 
noticed  the  effect  of  heat  upon  clay  and 
introduced  the  art  of  pottery.  Until  then 
men  had  no  utensils  that  could  withstand 


76     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

the  action  of  fire ;  they  could  not  boil 
water  except  by  dropping  hot  stones  into 
some  receptacle  of  wood  or  skin.  Now, 
by  the  new  device  of  boiling,  the  food- 
supply  was  enormously  increased.  The 
blessing  of  another  mastery  over  matter 
was  henceforth  shared  by  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  tribe.  But,  at  the  same  time, 
there  was  a  corresponding  force  added 
to  the  chief's  grip  upon  his  men.  We 
see  the  law  illustrated,  that  every  new  in- 
vention, owned  by  the  few,  becomes  one 
more  trap  for  the  many.  The  differentia- 
tion between  the  owner  of  the  tribe's 
wealth  and  the  propertyless  became  with 
the  introduction  of  pottery  fixed  and 
hopeless.  The  master  dealt  out  not  only 
fire  and  arrows,  but  cooking-utensils;  or 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     77 

he  withheld  all  these  if  he  saw  fit;  and 
if  you  had  been  there,  but  not  in  com- 
mand, you,  too,  would  have  tamely  sub- 
mitted or  have  died. 

XVI.    ANIMALS  TAMED  AND  IRON 
SMELTED 

The  word  "tamely"  which  I  have 
just  used,  brings  me  to  the  next  great 
event  which  moved  mankind  perceptibly 
nearer  to  civilization  proper.  It  is  an 
event  which  was  not  only  a  literal  fact 
of  prime  importance,  but  which  is  eter- 
nally a  symbol  of  man's  own  fate.  It 
was  probably  first  the  dog  that  lent  him- 
self to  the  imagination  of  the  speaking, 
fire-making,  arrow-shooting,  clay-bak- 
ing, anthropoid  ape,  as  a  stimulus  to  the 


78     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

idea  that  captive  animals  might  be  of 
service  to  human  beings.  Man  began  to 
tame  not  only  the  dog,  but  the  sheep, 
the  ox,  the  camel,  the  goat,  the  horse, 
and  the  elephant.  The  gain  to  all  the 
tribe  was  enormous.  The  men  all  shared 
in  the  profit,  but  once  more  their  mas- 
ter appropriated  the  new  increment  in 
power.  He  became  the  owner  of  the 
domesticated  animals  as  well  as  of  the 
inanimate  pot  and  arrow  and  flame.  But 
at  this  stage  it  must  have  seemed  to  all 
the  other  members  of  the  tribe  that  they 
also  were  owned,  soul  and  body,  by  their 
chief.  They  could  not  help  seeing,  nor 
could  he,  that  they  were  his  men.  And 
how  natural  it  was  for  them  to  rejoice 
in  the  fact  that  they  belonged  to  some 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     79 

one  who  was  mightier  than  themselves, 
and  who  identified  his  own  prosperity 
with  that  of  the  tribe,  and  of  every  indi- 
vidual in  it  who  served  it  according  to 
his  will.  Loyalty  to  the  beloved  com- 
munity became  loyalty  to  the  chief.  But 
it  is  evident  that  what  mankind  had 
caused  to  happen  to  the  dog  and  the 
horse,  the  chief  had  accomplished  in  re- 
gard to  the  human  beings  who  had  come 
under  his  power.  He  had  tamed  them ; 
they  were  no  longer  wild  animals.  They 
had  rendered  up  individual  liberty  and 
self-reliant  independence  such  as  we  see 
among  many  species  of  wild  beasts.  But 
instead,  as  the  price  of  obedience  to  a 
will  outside  their  own,  they  had  received 
a  thousand  creature-comforts. 


8o    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

Only  one  more  invention  was  needed 
to  lift  them  to  the  highest  and  latest  stage 
of  barbarism.  Some  one  now  hit  upon 
the  art  of  smelting  iron  —  the  first  in- 
vention that  had  not  directly  to  do  with 
the  supplying  of  food.  By  leaps  and 
bounds  the  art  of  smelting  iron  advanced 
man  in  the  equipment  of  war,  in  the 
building  of  houses,  roads,  and  vehicles  of 
transportation.  Now  what  magnificent 
returns  individuals  received  for  having 
surrendered  their  original  liberty  to  do  as 
they  pleased !  After  all,  what  would  inde- 
pendent initiative  have  been  worth  with- 
out fire  or  arrow  or  earthern  kettle,  or 
cow  or  horse  or  wheel,  or  sword  and 
shield?  Who  would  not  have  forfeited 
the  bare  birthright  of  empty  (although 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     81 

healthy)  independence  for  participation 
in  the  ever  richer  conquest  over  the  phys- 
ical resources  of  Nature  ? 

XVII.    CIVILIZATION    PROPER 

But  now  at  last,  only  ten  thousand 
years  ago,  the  event  occurred  which  put 
forever  out  of  the  question  any  possibility 
of  prudence  in  any  waywardness  of  indi- 
vidual whim,  or  any  deviation  from  the 
rule  dictated  by  the  owner  of  things. 
This  time  the  something  that  happened 
did  not  cause  an  increase  of  man's  mas- 
tery over  physical  Nature.  It  was,  in- 
stead, like  that  initial  invention  which 
turned  apes  into  men.  And  again,  like 
spoken  language,  it  was  a  device  to  facili- 
tate communication  of  mind  with  mind. 


82     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

In  some  one  of  the  many  groups  of  be- 
ings who  had  learned  the  use  of  fire, 
arrows,  pots,  sheep,  and  swords,  some 
genius  hit  upon  the  idea  of  written  signs 
as  a  medium  of  communication  with 
those  distant  in  space,  and  as  a  means  of 
perpetuating  a  knowledge  of  the  will  of 
the  dead  among  his  survivors.  But  be  it 
observed  that  only  the  master,  never  the 
man,  only  the  owner  of  things,  the  con- 
troller of  circumstances,  was  in  a  posi- 
tion to  embody  and  preserve  his  judgment 
and  desire  in  written  signs.  The  new  art 
of  writing  enhanced  the  power  of  rulers, 
of  chiefs.  The  Pharaoh,  not  the  fellah, 
dictated  the  inscription  that  was  to  be 
engraved.  Thus  all  the  rulers  of  the  past 
were  now  able  to  perpetuate  their  power 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     83 

by  adding  their  sanction  to  the  word  of 
the  living  chief,  while  no  voice  from  the 
ranks  of  the  governed  would  be  allowed 
to  immortalize  itself  in  written  speech. 
This  is  the  reason  that  written  language 
introduced  civilization  proper.  There 
was  no  longer  any  chance  for  the  wild- 
ness  of  the  beast  to  crop  out.  Here 
began  the  empire  of  the  dead  over  the 
living;  but  it  was  the  empire  of  dead 
rulers  over  living  slaves.  The  mastery 
over  Nature  and  the  monopoly  of  social 
power  thereby  became  practically  in- 
finite. The  tamers  were  now  omnipotent 
in  comparison  with  the  tamed.  It  must 
be  noticed  that  the  process  of  transform- 
ing beasts  into  citizens  was  one  to  which 
only  the  tamed,  but  not  the  tamers,  were 


84    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE* 

subjected.  The  ruler  stood  outside  of 
and  above  the  rule  he  made.  The  law 
was  for  his  subjects.  This  was  the  case 
with  Henry  VIII  at  the  acme  of  civil- 
ization as  it  had  been  with  the  first  of 
the  Pharaohs. 

Not  only  the  blond  beast  of  prey,  but 
the  swarthy  also  dictated  an  ethic  for 
his  subjects  in  order  to  keep  himself 
in  ascendancy.  It  was  because  Nietzsche 
admired  all  beasts  of  prey  and  felt  con- 
tempt for  their  victims  that  he  hated 
Jesus  Christ  and  proudly  assumed  the 
title  of  Anti-Christ.  For  Christ  had  set 
up  an  ethic  which  encouraged  the  vic- 
tims to  protest  and  attempt  to  win  back 
their  primeval  initiative,  to  take  over 
the  sovereignty  which  had  been  concen- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     85 

trated  in  the  hands  of  the  mighty  and 
to  diffuse  it  among  the  nobodies  of  the 
tribe.  St.  Luke  goes  so  far  as  to  assert 
that  even  before  Jesus  was  born  his 
Mother  entertained  levelling  ideas.  Into 
her  lips  he  puts  a  song  in  which  she  mag- 
nifies the  Lord  because  she  believed  her 
Son  would  bring  down  the  mighty  and 
exalt  them  of  low  degree.  But  alas!  civ- 
ilization went  on  for  fifteen  hundred 
years  and  succeeded  in  tying  Christian- 
ity to  the  chariot-wheel  of  monopolized 
initiative. 

XVIII.    THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY 
AFTER   CHRIST 

Christianity  had   to  wait   for   some- 
thing to  happen  that  would  lend  force 


86     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

to  its  Gospel.  That  something  did  not 
occur  until  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  Then,  as  I  have  already  said 
without  specifying  what  they  were,  a 
number  of  unforeseen  events  took  place 
which  opened  the  door  to  the  divine 
bridegroom  of  humanity. 

I  have  said  that  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury after  Christ  a  new  principle  began 
to  work  in  society ;  but  I  did  not  say  that 
it  was  then  for  the  first  time  promul- 
gated. Civilization  was  the  organization 
of  man's  mastery  over  Nature  on  a  basis 
of  self-interest ;  it  was  the  giving  only  so 
much  of  wealth  and  power  to  the  many 
as  was  compatible  with  the  retention  of 
one's  own  ascendancy.  To  be  civilized, 
then,  is  evidently  not  to  be  Christian 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     87 

any  more  than  it  is  to  be  Buddhistic  or 
Judaic,  socialistic  or  democratic.  Every- 
body admits  that  one  can  be  civilized 
and  be  none  of  these  things:  just  as  one 
may  be  "cultured  "  without  being  kind. 
In  other  words,  it  is  consistent  with  be- 
ing civilized  to  be  highly  selfish ;  one 
need  only  be  rationalized  in  one's  egoism. 
Indeed,  civilization  is  the  incarnation 
of  self-interest.  If  self-interest,  its  basic 
principle,  should  give  way  to  social  in- 
terest ;  if  the  monopoly  of  social  power 
should  be  broken  and  the  power  trans- 
ferred to  the  general  will  of  the  commu- 
nity; if  the  community  should  relegate 
its  administration  to  representatives,  but 
should  prevent  these  by  some  social 
device  from  ever  usurping  the  power 


88     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

entrusted  to  them,  then  something  new 
—  something  as  different  from  civiliza- 
tion as  the  airship  from  the  horse-cart  — 
would  have  begun  to  establish  itself.  A 
new  species  of  social  order  can  be  noth- 
ing other  than  an  order  whose  basic 
principle  is  totally  new ;  and  what  greater 
difference  could  exist  in  structuralizing 
tendencies  than  that  between  self-inter- 
est and  the  interest  of  the  community? 
Whenever  the  latter  gets  the  upper  hand, 
it  will  be  because  Fate,  the  Cosmos,  the 
Universe,  the  force  within  unconscious 
evolution,  has  caught  up  the  song  of  the 
Magnificat.  No  such  consummation  of 
humanity  has  taken  place,  but  it  is  un- 
deniable that  in  the  fifteenth  century  the 
Word  entered  like  a  seed  into  the  soil 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     89 

of  Fact.    The  Virgin's  prophecy  began 
to  fulfil  itself. 

Familiar  to  everybody,  and  quickly 
to  be  specified,  are  the  wonderful  events 
which  turned  the  vision  into  reality. 
One  of  these  events  was  the  invention 
of  gunpowder;  another  was  the  mari- 
ner's compass  ;  a  third  was  the  invention 
of  paper  ;  a  fourth,  the  printing-press  ; 
a  fifth  was  the  discovery  that  the  earth 
goes  round  the  sun  once  a  year,  and 
whirls  on  its  own  axis  once  a  day;  a 
sixth  was  that  indiscretion  of  Christo- 
pher Columbus,  whereby  instead  of  over- 
populated  India  he  opened  up  a  way  to 
the  vast  and  sparsely  denizened  Amer- 
icas. 


9o     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

These  events,  each  and  severally  and 
all  together,  produced  in  one  particular 
the  same  sort  of  effect  as  the  use  of  fire 
and  of  the  bow  and  arrow,  of  pottery, 
the  domestication  of  animals,  and  the 
smelting  of  iron  :  they  enhanced  incal- 
culably the  mastery  of  man  over  matter. 
But  in  the  other  particular  characteristic 
of  civilization  they  acted  in  the  very 
opposite  direction  from  all  preceding 
inventions.  Instead  of  entrenching  the 
master  in  his  monopoly  of  social  power, 
instead  of  furthering  the  differentiation 
of  society  into  master  and  man,  they  all 
played  into  the  hands  of  the  man.  For 
the  first  time  since  the  beginning  of  hu- 
man evolution,  inventions  checked  the 
monopolization  of  control  over  others. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     91 

But  the  initiative  that  now  flowed  to  the 
multitude  of  nobodies  was  not  that  puny 
freedom  and  narrow  scope  of  self-real- 
ization which  the  talking  ape  had  en- 
joyed. It  was  the  accumulated  foresight 
and  control  of  the  universe  outside  of 
man  which  had  been  storing  itself  up 
more  and  more  for  ninety  thousand 
years  in  the  intellects  and  wills  of  the 
favored  few.  The  floodgates  were 
opened  for  the  first  time  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  this  godlike  energy  flowed 
in  among  the  people  at  large,  so  that 
man,  the  many,  the  multitude,  were 
quickened  by  it  into  hope  on  earth,  unto 
life  here  and  now,  into  liberty,  creative 
originality,  and  the  joy  of  self-realiza- 
tion. 


92     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

But  it  was  only  the  beginning :  the 
effects  of  the  introduction  of  gunpow- 
der, the  compass,  the  printing-press  and 
paper,  and  the  new  ideas  about  the  heav- 
ens, and  the  opening-up  of  relatively  un- 
inhabited lands,  were  scarcely  discern- 
ible for  two  centuries,  and  then  only  as 
a  destructive  force.  Indeed,  for  still  an- 
other hundred  years  the  process  was  one 
chiefly  of  disintegration.  There  was  tak- 
ing place  a  transference  of  power  from 
the  few  to  the  many ;  a  diffusion  of  sov- 
ereignty, as  well  as  a  redistribution  of 
wealth ;  and  the  change  was  accompa- 
nied by  an  awakening  of  the  masses  to 
the  meaning  of  the  transformation  which 
they  were  undergoing.  The  people  be- 
gan to  realize  that  the  invention  of  gun- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     93 

powder  had  raised  the  peasant  as  a 
fighter  to  the  level  of  the  armed  knight ; 
that  the  compass  and  the  opening-up  of 
the  Western  hemisphere  made  it  possi- 
ble for  the  poor  to  escape  from  Euro- 
pean masters  whom  they  were  unable 
to  vanquish ;  and  that  the  cheapness  of 
books  was  linking  the  minds  of  the 
masses  to  the  sources  of  learning  and  of 
religious  tradition.  It  cannot  but  excite 
our  mystic  wonder  that  for  nearly  one 
hundred  thousand  years  every  new  mas- 
tery of  man  over  physical  Nature  was 
such  that  it  inevitably  played  into  the 
hands  of  rulers  by  strengthening  their 
monopoly  of  initiative  ;  and  that  then, 
at  last,  and  ever  since  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury after  Christ,  each  new  mechanical 


94    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

invention  or  discovery  has  had  the  un- 
intended and  undesired  effect  ultimately 
of  scattering  among  the  many  the  pent- 
up  power  of  owners  and  rulers,  and  of 
creating  in  the  many  fresh  psychic  en- 
ergy and  a  new  capacity  of  invention. 

This  great  process  of  levelling-up  took 
again  an  enormous  leap  forward  in  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The 
steam-engine  advanced  it  almost  as  much 
as  all  the  fifteenth-century  inventions 
and  discoveries  together.  The  new  fa- 
cilities of  travel  brought  new  experi- 
ences, and  these,  by  the  psychological 
law  of  contrast  and  novelty,  stimulated 
intelligence  many-fold.  The  new  speed 
in  transportation  made  it  possible  for 
thousands  to  escape  from  oppression 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     95 

where  scarcely  one  had  been  able  to  do 
so  in  former  generations.  The  Irish  peas- 
ants began  to  pour  into  America  ;  then 
followed  the  Germans ;  soon  Russians 
and  Latins  were  helped  to  leave  the  Old 
World  ;  sometimes  in  all  came  a  million- 
odd  in  one  year.  Wealth  was  multiplied 
and  scattered  to  a  degree  that  had  never 
been  dreamed  to  be  possible.  Not  only 
in  the  United  States,  but  in  France, 
Italy,  Scandinavia,  the  British  Empire, 
and  South  America,  the  diffusion  of 
social  initiative  was  taking  place.  First, 
power  spread  from  the  few  to  the  many 
severally ;  but  now,  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  the  many,  without  surrender- 
ing, have  been  pooling  their  new  power 
in  the  general  will  of  the  nation.  There, 


96     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

in  the  unified  and  unifying  purpose  of 
nations  like  America,  and  of  each  of  her 
federate  States,  the  power  is  being  safe- 
guarded for  the  community  and  for  its 
members  severally  by  political  devices 
which  render  public  servants  incapable 
of  prolonged  usurpation. 

XIX.   CIVILIZATION  FACES  ITS  SUCCESSOR 

Still,  the  new  order  is  far  from  being 
in  the  ascendant.  As  civilization  began 
with  the  introduction  of  the  use  of  fire, 
but  was  not  triumphant  until  the  inven- 
tion of  written  language,  so  the  new 
order  —  call  it  what  you  will :  Chris- 
tianity, the  Meaning  of  America,  the 
Dream  of  California,  the  Wisconsin 
Idea,  Social  Democracy,  Humanity  — 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     97 

this  new  order  has  only  entered  in  as 
yeast  which  has  not  yet  had  a  chance  to 
leaven  the  whole  lump.  But  the  fermen- 
tation now  goes  on  apace.  The  World- 
War  is  perhaps  best  understood  when  it 
is  looked  upon  as  a  struggle  of  civiliza- 
tion against  its  successor.  Alarmed  and 
armed  to  the  teeth,  civilization  (applied 
science  organized  on  a  basis  of  reasoned 
self-interest)  is  attempting  to  expand  it- 
self over  territory  which  had  been  pre- 
empted and  mapped  out  by  social  de- 
mocracy, and  was  being  devoted,  in  the 
spirit  of  the  ideal  commonwealth  fore- 
shadowed in  Christian  sentiment  and 
Jewish  prophecy,  to  the  co-ordination 
of  wealth  and  power  on  the  principle  of 
deference  to  the  humanity  in  every  man. 


98     IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

But  more  significant  than  the  World- 
War  of  the  passing  away  of  the  old  order 
and  its  supersession  by  a  new  are  the  ten 
or  twenty  inventions,  ideas,  discoveries, 
and  new  social  contacts  which  marked 
the  first  decade  of  the  present  century. 
No  doubt  even  the  World- War  has  been 
precipitated  by  the  sudden  inrush  of 
these  unprecedented  forces,  and  the  real- 
ization of  their  trend  by  the  self-centred 
leaders  of  civilization. 

It  would  seem  that  the  civilized,  an- 
ticipating a  move  on  the  part  of  the 
humanized,  and  fearing  an  appropria- 
tion of  the  benefits  of  new  inventions, 
stole  a  march  upon  the  unsuspecting. 
The  result  is,  that  we  saw  at  the  outset 
of  the  war  the  latest  appliances  seized 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?     99 

upon  by  the  upholders  of  arbitrary  power, 
and  only  now,  after  the  first  shock  of 
attack,  are  the  builders  of  an  earthly 
paradise  demonstrating  their  ability  and 
intention  to  turn  all  the  forces  of  Na- 
ture and  devices  of  reason  to  the  service 
of  each  in  the  brotherhood  of  the  com- 
mon life.  We  are  beginning  to  see,  also, 
that  every  one  of  the  latest  inventions 
is  such  in  its  nature  that  soon  victory 
must  come  to  the  cause  of  economic 
and  political  equality. 

Even  the  cheapness  of  motor-cars 
will  overtake  the  champions  of  indus- 
trial monopoly,  who  at  the  first  used 
them  for  the  hoarding  of  social  power. 
The  submarine  can  at  the  first  only  be 
turned  against  the  freedom  of  the  seas 


ioo    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

during  times  of  peace.  The  aeroplane 
and  the  airship,  more  than  any  other 
instruments  of  locomotion,  will  assist  in 
the  diffusion  of  initiative  among  all  the 
outlying  and  small  nations  of  the  earth. 
More  than  anything  else  they  will  assist 
the  weak  and  the  meek  of  the  earth  to 
rush  together  to  one  another's  rescue; 
and  wireless  telegraphy,  as  soon  as  it 
is  established  universally,  will  sound  to 
them  the  alarum  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye.  All  the  new  inventions  are,  as  it 
were,  God's  detectives  for  the  exposing 
of  the  subtle  and  disguised  crimes  of  the 
great ;  or  they  are  God's  captains  for  the 
mobilization  of  the  scattered  forces  of 
the  meek  when  the  plot  of  an  oppressor 
has  been  unearthed.  The  people  need 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    101 

only  to  realize  that  the  new  inventions 
are  by  their  very  nature  breakers  of 
power-monopolies,  in  order  to  find  in 
them  an  irresistible  incentive  to  rise 
and  act  in  the  cause  of  world-wide 
democratic  initiative.  High  explosives, 
the  gas-engine,  the  giant  gun,  sheets  of 
flame,  deadly  gases,  all  these  are  with- 
in the  reach  of  Christ's  little  ones  to 
encircle  their  kingdom-that-is-coming 
against  the  attacks  of  inhuman  humans. 
The  new  inventions  are  humanity's  de- 
structors to  annihilate  civilization's  de- 
stroyers. 

I  have  specified  some  of  the  twentieth 
century's  inventions  to  show  that,  like 
the  compass  and  the  printing-press,  they 


io2    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

will  be  scatterers  of  privileges  to  the 
masses.  I  might  go  on  indefinitely  add- 
ing to  the  list,  but  I  will  cite  only  one 
more.  It  was  only  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  century  that  a  new  way 
of  making  cheap  paper  was  discovered 
—  so  cheap  that  it  became  possible  to 
sell  great  dailies  for  one  cent.  But  this 
practice  was  not  established  until  the 
twentieth  century.  And  it  was  only  a 
few  years  ago  that  the  greatest  news- 
paper of  the  world  —  and  a  very  strong- 
hold of  upper-class  monopoly  —  was 
able,  or  driven,  to  reduce  its  price  from 
threepence  (six  cents)  to  a  penny.  But 
I  specify  the  case  of  the  London  Times 
because,  like  a  miracle  of  divine  healing, 
but  entirely  due  to  the  cheapness  of  pa- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    103 

per,  is  the  change  of  its  policy  from  that 
of  brutal  imperialism  to  the  democratic 
one  of  transforming  the  British  Empire 
into  a  commonwealth  of  equal  states. 
Now  that  the  Times  has  been  converted, 
we  may  be  sure  that  the  universe  itself 
has  come  round  to  the  side  of  the  right, 
and  has  taken  up  the  cause  of  the  poor. 
By  the  pricking  of  my  thumbs  I  know 
that  something  better  than  civilization 
this  way  comes.  Dull  indeed  must  be 
that  man  whose  blood  does  not  tingle 
with  anticipation.  Yet  the  physical  in- 
ventions of  the  twentieth  century  are 
not  to  be  compared  in  pregnancy  of 
good  with  its  less  palpable,  its  spiritual, 
novelties. 


104    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

XX.    AGAINST  THE  MATERIALISTIC 
VIEW  OF  HISTORY 

Before  passing,  however,  from  the 
physical  inventions  to  the  new  moral 
ideas  and  mental  contacts,  I  must  inter- 
polate a  comment  to  save  myself  from 
misunderstanding.  Generally,  those  who 
trace  to  mechanical  utilities  new  epochs 
in  the  development  of  mankind  proceed 
upon  the  materialistic  theory  of  history. 
But  this  theory  I  have  in  no  wise  com- 
mitted myself  to,  for  I  count  it  to  be 
false.  It  is  true  that  I  have  traced  all  the 
great  steps  in  human  advancement  to 
physical  inventions,  but  I  have  in  no 
word  implied  that  the  inventions  them- 
selves were  caused  by  anything  material 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    105 

whatsoever.  And  if  they  themselves 
were,  as  I  believe,  the  result  of  man's 
mental  and  spiritual  activities  reacting 
against  events,  then  my  tracing  of  hu- 
man advancement  to  them  implies  no 
belief  in  the  materialistic  theory  of  his- 
tory. Every  effect  of  the  inventions  must 
be  set  down  ultimately  not  to  them, 
but  to  their  causes ;  and  their  causes 
were  mental.  Casually  I  have  said  as 
much,  in  remarking  several  times  that 
they  took  place  by  a  happy  chance,  or 
by  a  stroke  of  insight  on  the  part  of 
some  rare  genius,  or  by  the  reaction  of 
some  mediocre  person's  intelligent  vo- 
lition against  some  extraordinary  expe- 
rience which  made  the  idea  of  the 
invention  so  obtrusively  evident  that 


106    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

even  a  mind  not  unusually  gifted  could 
scarcely  have  avoided  lighting  upon  it. 
The  only  phrase  I  have  used  by 
which  I  cannot  absolutely  stand  is  the 
expression  "  by  a  happy  chance  "  ;  for 
I  believe  that  the  mental  productions 
of  each  person  are  due  not  to  uncaused 
chance,  or  to  accident,  but  to  trends  of 
the  social  mind  that  have  been  set  in 
motion  by  mental  exigencies  arising 
out  of  current  events.  As  primitive  peo- 
ples, however,  have  left  no  record  of 
their  mental  sequences,  we  cannot  say 
with  confidence  what  were  the  exact 
experiences  that  led  to  the  idea  of  using 
fire,  or  to  any  other  device  that  trans- 
formed the  relation  of  human  beings  to 
one  another  or  to  their  material  habitat. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    107 

I  only  repeat  that  whatever  caused  the 
inventions  caused  all  the  remote  effects 
of  these,  and  that  if  the  causes  of  the 
inventions  were  mental  and  spiritual, 
then  an  interpretation  of  history  is  not 
materialistic  merely  because  it  traces 
advancement  to  mechanical  utilities. 
That  I  am  right  in  tracing  these  to 
mental  and  spiritual  causes  is  proved  at 
least  in  the  case  of  recent  inventions. 
For  we  know  that  their  causes  were 
psychic ;  we  know  the  mental  atmos- 
phere, and  how  it  arose,  that  brought 
forth  the  telephone  and  aeroplane  and 
submarine.  We  know  that  these  were 
not  due  to  physical  necessities  or  to 
any  material  causes.  They  arose  from 
the  brooding  of  creative  imaginations 


io8    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

disciplined  in  a  method  learned  by  re- 
flection upon  former  successes  in  discov- 
ery. We  also  know  in  what  main  par- 
ticulars this  modern  atmosphere  differs 
from  that  of  former  centuries.  But  such 
questions  are  not  germane  to  my  cen- 
tral theme,  and  so  I  pass  them  over 
lightly.  Let  me  then  return  without 
further  delay  from  this  digression  which 
has  been  made  in  the  interests,  not  of 
my  argument,  but  of  my  self-respect  as 
a  student  of  social  facts. 

XXI.    CONTACT  OF  PEOPLES 

Consider,  for  instance,  that  at  the  be- 
ginning of  our  century,  for  the  first  time 
in  more  than  fifteen  hundred  years,  the 
Christian  nations  came  into  contact  with 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    109 

a  mighty  pagan  power,  and  were  com- 
pelled to  acknowledge  it  as  not  only  a 
political,  but  a  moral,  equal.  Whoever 
knows  the  magical  effect  in  the  quick- 
ening of  intellectual  and  spiritual  life 
due  to  new  contact  with  a  contrasting 
type  of  national  culture  will  agree  that 
the  meeting  thus  of  Christendom  with 
the  so-called  "heathen"  world  is  a  fact 
of  prime  significance  in  the  history  of 
man. 

Nor  is  it  simply  the  contact  of  heathen 
and  Christian  on  terms  of  moral  equal- 
ity. There  is  another  aspect  to  Japan's 
ascendancy  and  her  recognition  by  the 
West.  The  East  and  the  West  meet  at 
last.  The  psychic  invasion  of  each  by  the 
other  must  be  epoch-making  and  in  the 


no    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

direction  of  the  completeness  and  uni- 
fication spiritually  of  all  mankind  in  a 
brotherhood  of  nations  and  nation-states. 
The  new  contact  of  heathen  and  Chris- 
tian, and  of  white  and  colored,  of  East 
and  West,  means  that  the  exploitation 
of  the  dark  races  by  nations  more  highly 
organized  on  a  basis  of  self-interest  is 
about  to  cease  forever.  With  the  hu- 
manization  of  the  West  will  come  the 
salvation  of  those  tribes  who  never  di- 
vided themselves  so  absolutely  into  the 
"haves"  and  the  " have-nots,"  or  who 
never  attained  a  high  mastery  over  the 
physical  universe. 

Are  there  persons  in  America  who  say 
what,  until  the  present  war,  many  in  Old 
England  thought —  that  there  is  nothing 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    in 

new  under  the  sun  ?  Then  I  would  call 
their  attention  to  the  unprecedented  and 
revolutionary  character  of  the  contact  in 
the  United  States,  on  a  basis  of  relative 
political  and  social  equality,  of  immi- 
grants from  some  fifty-one  different  na- 
tions of  the  Old  World.  These  people 
will  mix  their  blood,  their  tempera- 
ments, and  their  traditions,  and  not  only 
will  a  new  variety  of  human  being 
emerge,  but  the  mixing  of  opposites  in 
idea  and  temperament  will  quicken  self- 
consciousness  and  heighten  mental  power 
and  speed  up  its  activity.  The  opportu- 
nity of  the  blond  beasts  of  prey  has  lain 
in  the  torpor  and  inactivity  and  igno- 
rance of  the  multitude.  But  I  find  no 
torpor  in  California.  And  where  there 


ii2    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

is  no  one  that  will  allow  himself  to  be 
preyed  upon,  even  blond  beasts  take  up 
the  new  enterprise  of  co-operation  among 
equals.  This  is  an  inevitable  result  of 
the  contact  of  many  varieties  of  unlikes, 
the  unification,  not  of  equals,  but  of 
supplementary  equivalents.  When  such 
psychic  conditions  have  prevailed  for  a 
century  or  more,  it  is  inconceivable  that 
trade  can  continue  to  consist  of  compe- 
tition between  individuals  and  the  per- 
mission of  the  successful  to  amass  and 
hoard  fortunes.  Either  production  and 
distribution  will  become  communal,  or 
the  community  will  tax  large  fortunes 
into  the  state  and  national  treasury. 

But  there  are  three  other  distinguish- 
ing characteristics  of  the  twentieth  cen- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    u3 

tury  which  make  for  the  replacing  of 
civilization  by  humanization,  and  for  the 
transition  of  trade  from  the  harshness  of 
the  law  into  the  abounding  grace  of  the 
gospel 

XXII.    THE  POWER  TO  TRANSMIT  HUMAN 
LIFE,  ITS  SOCIAL  CONTROL 

First,  the  limiting  of  population  by 
the  will  of  human  individuals.  In  the 
beginning  men  stole  fire  from  the  gods ; 
but  life  they  allowed  the  Almighty  to 
continue  to  dispense  at  his  own  inscrut- 
able pleasure,  while  they  remained  his 
pleased  but  puzzled  agents  in  its  trans- 
mission. It  was  only  in  the  eighties  of 
the  last  century,  after  a  hundred  thou- 
sand years,  that  man  hit  upon  the  idea 


n4    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

and  the  practice  of  controlling  life  as  he 
had  controlled  fire.  From  the  beginning, 
he  had  planted  the  fire-seed  according 
to  his  own  purpose  and  social  need.  And 
now  at  last  he  has  come  to  look  upon 
the  life-seed  as  not  simply  in  his  keep- 
ing as  a  trust  for  another,  but  as  his  own 
property  to  control  in  the  interest  of  his 
own  future.  Can  human  audacity  reach 
higher  ?  Can  the  assumption  of  divine 
and  creative  responsibility  by  man  out- 
strip this  latest  act  of  self-government  ? 
From  beast  to  citizen,  did  we  say  ?  But 
have  we  not  found  the  process  during 
the  last  four  hundred  years  to  be  from 
citizenship  to  godship,  from  creature  to 
creator  ?  It  was  one  of  your  American 
reformers  who  entitled  a  book  Man  as 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    115 

Social  Creator.  From  beast  to  citizen 
seemed  dull  enough ;  but  from  citizen  to 
God  —  what  intoxication  of  zest  does 
this  thought  engender  !  Can  the  creature 
dare  it  ?  Is-  this  the  great  venture  ?  Is 
this  the  meaning  of  the  travail  of  the 
ages  ?  Or  is  it  only  a  process  from  citizen 
to  man,  from  tamed  beast  to  free  spirit 
feeling  the  Soul  of  All  at  the  inmost 
centre  of  himself,  and  rinding  the  means 
at  last  of  incarnating  that  soul  in  the  com- 
munity, in  politics,  trade,  and  domestic 
life?  Howsoever  the  new  facts  and  the 
newer  outlook  are  to  be  interpreted,  it 
becomes  quite  clear  that  if  civilization 
was  the  taming  of  beasts,  something  that 
is  not  civilization  has  begun  to  assert 
itself.  The  liberating  of  citizens,  as  it 


n6    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

moves  to  triumphant  attainment,  must 
scrap  many  an  institution,  many  a  habit, 
and  set  up  the  reverse  of  many  a  rule  of 
conduct.  We  have  indeed  reached  a  new 
era,  one  which  is  not  that  of  taming 
animals,  when  young  women  can  — 
and  know  that  they  can — as  war-brides 
strike  against  the  labor  of  maternity  and 
against  the  foreseen  horror  of  a  fate  for 
one's  offspring  such  as  they  would  never 
choose  for  the  fruit  of  their  love. 

But,  secondly,  close  upon  the  inven- 
tion of  means  for  controlling  the  trans- 
mission of  life  has  followed  the  idea  that 
this  control  shall  not  rest  with  the  in- 
dividuals most  intimately  concerned,  but 
with  the  will  of  the  community  —  of 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    117 

the  nation  —  of  federated  humanity.  If 
a  man  has  no  exclusive  right  to  do  as  he 
pleases  with  his  power  of  labor,  to  with- 
hold it  or  direct  it  irrespective  of  the 
general  welfare  and  the  will  of  the  com- 
monweal, how  much  less,  say  the  ad- 
vocates of  eugenic  marriage,  shall  men 
and  women  be  permitted  to  follow  their 
own  whim  and  their  selfish  pleasure  as 
regards  the  use  or  waste  of  the  power  to 
communicate  life?  This  new  doctrine 
that  men  are  only  trustees  for  the  nation 
and  posterity  in  their  central  power  to 
control  the  future  quantity  and  quality 
of  human  beings  whom  they  may  bring 
into  existence,  recognizes  no  division  of 
society  into  the  tamed  and  the  tamers. 
There  is  no  class  suggested  of  monopo- 


n8    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

lists  of  social  power  who  will  regulate 
the  rest  of  the  community,  as  the  owner 
of  cattle  controls  the  breeding  of  them. 
The  general  will  of  the  community,  ad- 
ministered under  diffused  public  opin- 
ion and  through  the  educated  judgment 
of  the  individual  himself,  will  decide. 
Only  in  cases  of  what  are  agreed  to  be 
downright  crimes  will  the  law  step  in 
to  condemn  and  prevent,  and  then  only 
through  agents  who  are  directly  account- 
able to  an  enlightened  and  alert  public 
opinion.  The  retaining  of  this  new  mas- 
tery of  man  over  the  quantity  and  qual- 
ity of  human  life,  by  the  communal 
conscience  against  all  monopolists,  is  the 
transcendent  feature  of  the  new  order. 
But  if  this  be  so,  then  trade,  our  system 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    119 

of  producing  and  distributing  wealth, 
ceases  to  be  merely  a  question  of  the 
control  of  labor  and  becomes  a  question 
of  the  control  of  the  transmission  of  hu- 
man life.  Such  control  might  have  been 
accounted  a  possible  privilege  among 
Virginian  breeders  of  slaves.  But  so  to 
regard  it  seems  monstrous,  now  that 
chattel  slavery  has  been  universally  con- 
demned, thanks  to  the  triumphant  level- 
lers of  the  last  hundred  years.  What  is 
more,  all  trade  is  beginning  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  question  ultimately,  not  of 
the  manufacture  of  machines  and  their 
products,  nor  of  the  propagation  of  plants 
and  animals,  but  of  the  begetting  of 
spiritual  agents,  who  in  their  turn  are 
to  become  the  makers  and  masters 


120    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

of  the  universe  in  which  they  are  to 
live. 

The  third  characteristic  event  of  our 
century  which  is  to  help  us  to  slough 
off  civilization,  as  our  ancestors  ten  thou- 
sand years  ago  rid  themselves  of  the  wild- 
beast  features  of  barbarism  and  savagery, 
is  the  awakening  of  women.  Their  claim 
to  social  initiative  and  responsibility  is  the 
extremest  possible  reach  of  democratic 
self-assertion.  The  remarkable  peculiarity 
of  their  entrance  into  trade  is  not,  however, 
that  they  are  women,  but  that  they  are 
the  one  half  of  mankind  who  have  never 
worked  for  hire,  but  always  from  love, 
and  who  have  desired  the  wage  less  than 
the  approval  of  those  they  served.  The 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    121 

morals  of  trade,  as  it  has  existed  under 
the  relation  of  master  to  wage-earner, 
even  the  ethics  of  trades-unionism,  can- 
not survive  the  censure  of  women,  who 
on  other  principles  demand  for  them- 
selves the  right  of  maintenance  by  the 
state  to  protect  them  in  the  bearing  and 
rearing  of  children  and  the  making  of 
homes,  and  the  nursing  of  the  wounded 
and  the  sick.  Now  that  women  no  longer 
allow  themselves  as  social  agents  to  be 
ignored,  they  will  insist  that  not  only 
the  morals  of  marriage  and  of  demo- 
cratic relations  must  become  humane, 
but  that  all  trade,  as  well  as  all  legisla- 
tion, must  be  guided  by  the  eugenic 
motive. 


122    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

XXIII.    FOREIGN  TRADE  THE    BEGETTER 
OF  WARS 

I  have  presumed  to  say  that  modern 
trade  discloses  civilization  in  its  acutest 
form.  The  strict  sobriety  of  this  asser- 
tion we  cannot,  perhaps,  appreciate  to 
the  full,  unless  we  note  the  relation  of 
trade  during  the  last  three  hundred  years 
to  aggressive  warfare.  There  prevails  in 
the  public  mind  the  false  notion  that 
somehow  peace  and  trade  are  akin  in 
spirit  and  identical  in  their  interests. 
This  notion  has  been  assiduously  foisted 
upon  the  public  by  kings  of  industry 
and  some  professors  of  sociology,  who 
possibly  believe  that  it  is  true.  But  the 
facts  of  history  prove  that  every  great 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    123 

war  during  the  last  three  centuries  has 
been  undertaken  in  the  service  of  foreign 
traders,  who  call  upon  their  government 
to  back  their  claims.  According  to  Sir 
John  Seeley,  the  greatest  political  histo- 
rian of  the  British  Empire,  foreign  trade 
and  modern  war  have  always  been  one 
and  the  same  thing.  Some  small  nation- 
state  resented  the  advent  and  methods 
of  the  foreign  traders,  and  began  to  pre- 
pare for  self-defence,  asserting  that  it 
wished  to  be  left  alone,  and  that  it  meant 
to  defend  its  own  sacred  traditions.  This 
the  government  that  backed  the  traders 
would  not  permit,  and  a  clash  of  arms 
ensued.  Or  two  rival  sets  of  foreigners 
were  jealous  of  each  other  in  their  effort 
to  possess  one  and  the  same  market  and 


124    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

induced  their  respective  governments  to 
spring  at  each  other's  throats.  Under 
such  circumstances  war  does  not  always 
arise,  because  the  mere  show  of  vastly 
superior  might  is  often  sufficient  to  com- 
pel immediate  submission.  Such  was  the 
case  when  the  United  States  in  1853  ex~ 
hibited  in  the  harbors  of  bewildered  and 
terrified  Japan  a  fleet  of  great  steamships. 
The  threatened  nation,  having  admitted 
no  foreigners  since  the  Jesuits  in  the 
seventeenth  century  plotted  against  its 
political  independence,  and  not  know- 
ing how  to  use  steam  to  propel  engines, 
saw  that  there  was  no  alternative  to  vio- 
lent conquest  by  their  uninvited  guests 
but  peaceful  submission  on  their  own 
part. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    125 

Such  peace,  however,  is  not  the  holy 
thing  which  some  persons  declare  all 
peace  to  be.  When  a  man  holds  up  his 
hands  in  answer  to  the  challenge  of  a 
highway  robber,  bloodshed  is  avoided; 
but  the  outrage  is  none  the  less  detest- 
able because  perfect  quiet  prevails.  Nor 
is  it  the  kind  of  social  calm  which  the 
angels  meant  when  they  proclaimed 
peace  on  earth  to  men  of  good  will.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  that  stillness  of  un- 
challenged iniquity  of  which  our  Lord 
expressed  his  menacing  hate  when  He 
declared  that  He  came  not  to  bring 
peace  but  a  sword.  Trade  illustrates 
civilization  in  its  highest  degree  of  in- 
telligence and  elaboration  ;  and  foreign 
trade  is  only  trade  in  its  widest  transac- 


126    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

tions.  But  foreign  trade  being  the  cause 
of  all  war,  the  only  way  to  end  warfare 
is  to  displace  civilization  by  a  system  of 
wealth  produced  and  distributed  under 
communal  control.  Then  commerce 
will  no  longer  be  inspired  by  the  finan- 
cial interest  of  private  investors,  but  by 
the  total  welfare  of  the  whole  people  of 
the  nation.  But  I  have  touched  upon  the 
identity  of  war  and  trade  only  to  show 
their  vital  connection  with  civilization 
as  a  whole. 

XXIV.  THE  OPPOSITE  OF  A  "RETURN 
TO  NATURE" 

Civilization  is  still  advancing  by  leaps 
and  bounds.  Nevertheless,  at  the  same 
time,  with  a  greater  acceleration  of  de- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    127 

velopment,  the  men  are  checkmating 
the  master  and  transferring  control  and 
initiative  to  the  will  of  the  common- 
wealth. At  least,  not  otherwise  am  I 
able  to  interpret  the  new  deference  for 
nationality  which  has  been  aroused  in 
protest  against  aggressive  militarism ; 
nor  the  kind  of  industrial  legislation 
that  has  been  enacted  during  the  last 
decade  in  California  and  other  western 
states,  in  New  Zealand  and  Australia, 
and  even  in  Italy  and  England.  It  all 
means  that  the  new  inventions,  although 
at  first  seized  upon  by  monopolists,  are 
seen  to  be  such  as  to  provide  channels 
through  which  the  pent-up  instincts  and 
hopes  of  the  masses  can  act  with  con- 
certed power.  It  means  that  also  polit- 


128    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

ical  machinery  is  being  devised  for  se- 
curing the  public  welfare  and  protecting 
opportunities  for  individual  genius  and 
talent.  No  man  asks  for  more.  The 
world  over  we  have  reached  the  thresh- 
old of  collective  democracy,  wherein 
the  consuming  of  material  wealth  will 
be  shared  with  approximate  equality  and 
wherein  social  control  will  be  retained 
by  the  collective  will,  to  safeguard  indi- 
vidual initiative,  and  will  be  adminis- 
tered by  public  servants  who  have  proved 
their  superior  ability,  but  who  remain 
subject  to  almost  instantaneous  recall. 

Such  a  substitute  for  civilization,  how- 
ever, is  the  opposite  of  a  return  to  the 
individualism  of  Nature  or  to  a  primeval 
communism.  It  presupposes  the  highest 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    129 

mastery  of  man  over  matter  and  social 
unity  among  all  mankind  co-operating 
as  nation-states  and  federations  of  states. 
As  regards  external  government  and 
law,  it  is  the  antithesis  of  Mr.  Carpen- 
ter's proposal  that  they  should  disappear, 
because  they  are  the  travesty  of  inward 
government  and  order.  On  the  contrary, 
I  hope  that  external  government,  ani- 
mated by  the  general  will  of  a  social 
democratic  commonwealth  and  vested 
in  representatives  sensitively  accountable 
to  an  alert  and  intelligent  public  opin- 
ion, will  appear  to  my  listeners  not  as 
a  travesty,  but  as  the  very  incarnation 
of  that  inward  government  and  order 
which  every  individual  man  must  feel 
to  be  the  law  of  his  own  being  unless 


130    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

he  has  lost  his  manhood's  centrality.  A 
crushing  indictment  of  Mr.  Carpenter's 
modern  movement  back  to  Nature  is  to 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  it  has  declined 
instead  of  advancing  during  the  twenty- 
six  years  since  he  wrote.  Probably  fewer 
persons  in  England  preach  salvation  by 
sandals  and  sunbaths  to-day  than  did 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  while  the 
sandals  themselves  and  sunbaths  have 
become  but  items  among  the  general 
products  of  industry  and  governmental 
hygiene.  The  sunbath  is  only  one  of 
the  many  remedies  prescribed  to  the 
poor  by  doctors  impanelled  by  the  Brit- 
ish state,  and  the  sandals  are  better  made 
by  machinery  than  by  the  hands  of  po- 
etic hermits. 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    131 

But  while  the  vision  of  philosophical 
anarchy  has  been  fading  away,  whole 
nations  on  a  gigantic  scale  have  been 
subjecting  the  power  of  trusts  and  mo- 
nopolies to  the  general  will  of  the  com- 
munity. In  America  you  have  changed 
your  federal  law  and  many  of  your  state 
constitutions,  in  order  that  the  right  of 
the  common  will  to  dictate  may  be 
unquestioned,  and  that  no  occasion  for 
lawless  violence  need  ever  arise  through 
any  legal  barrier  to  the  full  assertion  of 
the  mind  of  the  common  life. 

So  in  every  particular  of  his  cure  for 
civilization  Mr.  Carpenter's  worship  of 
savagery  and  barbarism  is  being  rejected 
as  fantastic.  We  may  return  to  uncooked 
fruits  and  grains.  But  what  a  task  for 


132    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

the  most  highly  developed  industrial 
state,  to  raise  and  distribute  an  adequate 
supply  of  grapes,  apples,  and  nuts  the 
year  round  for  the  1,000,000,000  in- 
habitants of  the  globe !  What  a  call  for 
many  wizards  of  California  to  produce 
new  species  of  luscious  edibles !  It  would 
seem  to  me  that  the  curse  of  civilization 
has  lain  in  the  direction  of  too  little  of 
either  cooked  or  uncooked  food,  instead 
of  too  much.  If  the  common  people  are 
to  come  into  their  own,  trade  in  every 
necessity  and  luxury  must  be  more  highly 
integrated.  The  difference  of  the  new 
era  as  regards  foreign  commerce  will 
chiefly  be  that  nations  as  a  whole  by 
their  governments  will  conduct  it  in- 
stead of  private  traders.  In  other  words, 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    133 

foreign  trade  will  be  nationalized,  in  the 
way  that  social  democrats  have  long  de- 
manded that  land  and  capital  should  be. 
The  community  will  own  and  control 
it  through  state  agents  for  the  common 
welfare.  Nothing  of  good  which  civili- 
zation has  brought  forth  will  be  lost, 
nor  will  the  organization  of  wealth  be 
relaxed. 

Machinery  will  be  multiplied  a  thou- 
sandfold. Like  the  human  body  itself, 
social  life  must  become  as  complex  as  it 
can  without  losing  its  centrality.  Be  it 
remembered  that  the  truly  simple  life  is 
not  gained  by  meagreness  of  possessions 
and  interests,  but  by  singleness  of  aim 
controlling  a  seemingly  infinite  number 
of  detailed  means.  But  this  unity  domi- 


i34    IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 

nating  a  multiplicity  of  interests  is  at- 
tainable only  through  the  entire  mechan- 
ism of  external  government.  And  again, 
as  the  man  resides  in  all  the  organs  of 
the  body,  but  is  himself  no  organ,  and 
as  by  the  central  unity  of  his  life-energy 
is  able  to  rush  the  white  corpuscles  to 
any  part  that  is  wounded  or  poisoned, 
so  the  general  will,  the  community-self 
of  the  social  democratic  state,  is  begin- 
ning to  direct  all  the  healing  agencies  in 
the  body  politic  to  the  rescue  of  the  un- 
fortunate. Such  beneficence  and  benev- 
olence, systematized  and  alert,  is  more 
than  civilization.  It  is  Christianity,  it  is 
the  doing  unto  the  least  of  one's  fellow- 
men  what  self-interest  prompts  one  never 
to  do;  but  its  power  is  equal  to  the  re- 


IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE?    135 

demptive  goodness  that  inspires  it.  In 
motive  and  method  it  is  not  business,  it 
is  different  from  trade;  for  it  is  a  prog- 
eny of  pity.  But  nevertheless,  it  is  so- 
cialized wealth  and  applied  science  and 
politics.  It  is  government  by  the  gov- 
erned. 

When  civilization  has  been  superseded 
by  this  democratic  process,  which  in  our 
century  is  advancing  at  such  rapid  gait, 
there  will  surely  be  in  the  sphere  of  re- 
ligion no  more  return  to  Nature  than  in 
that  of  economics.  There  will  be  no  more 
the  worship  of  any  one  instinct  or  organ, 
or  any  external  object  or  agent.  How 
could  Carpenter  have  so  far  forgotten  his 
own  definition  of  health  as  to  applaud 


136  IS  CIVILIZATION  A  DISEASE? 
the  primitive  ritualistic  worship  of  the 
glories  of  the  human  body  and  the  pro- 
cession of  the  stars  ?  That  ritual  was  itself 
the  symptom  of  the  break-up  of  man's 
character  into  multiplicity,  and  the  in- 
subordination of  specific  organs.  Surely 
when  man  has  gained  centrality  of  health, 
he  will  worship  the  unifying  will  which 
is  dominant  whenever  health  prevails. 
He  will  adore  the  spirit  which  makes 
the  many  one.  But  men  will  never  gain 
that  centrality  of  health  until  they  have 
established  this  worship  of  the  one  heart 
that  beats  in  every  human  breast  and, 
being  inspired  with  religious  passion  for 
it,  have  brought  the  entire  economic 
order  into  conformity  with  its  behests. 


Rtocriibe  presif 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .  S   .  A 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

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